How long to get out of the sandbox?

Well..as much as I don't really believe in the sandbox I think I mis-judged myself. I have a domain just over a month old and at first was seeing some google traffic (not tons..but some)..Over the past week I've noticed my google traffic going down. I've still managed to get more page's indexed and backlinks raised, but less traffic. Leads me to believe i've hit the sandbox. Any ideas on how long it may take to get out of the sandbox?

My intentions are to keep writing new content and building backlinks, but how long will this last?!

 

That would depend on how aggressive you build on back links or the niche you are in. If I build a site naturally I'll give it 3 - 6 months before I even start considering its positions.

Sounds like Google has finally grabbed your site and placed it in the so called sand box, I prefer to call it a trust filter (its all about time & trust with Google).

Personally I would concentrate on building more content but keep an eye out for chances of getting highly relevant back links. Its about quality links and not quantity.

 

I think I am in the same boat. My experience is just like FPForums. 1 month good SERPS, then additional indexing and gradual drop in rankings

 

Yip thats very normal for Google. Treat it like a tease on what you could have from Google.

 

My daughter built a photography site that, to the best of my observation, never entered the sandbox. From the outset I gave her a strong, similar-themed link from my established website. I also secured for her some nice-PR directory backlinks. And she got some links with PR from other photography websites. Result? She ranked for her keywords from the beginning and never lost the rankings. An exception to the rule? Perhaps, but that's how it did indeed play out. No sandbox for her site.

 

Jim I've seen that with some of my own sites. I think its a matter of getting the positions to stick within the first phase of going live. Its the tricky part but it can be done as you've described.

Your established site link and the other photography links probably did wonders for it.

 

This depends upon some factors

 

No way to tell how long it takes to get out of the sandbox, I just know that it is quite easy to get put into it with a new domain so I'm going to have majorly scale down a few of my linkbuilding tactics for newer domains.

 

how can i check that my site is in sandboxed or not

 

The Sandbox Effect is a theory used to explain certain behaviours observed with the Google search engine. The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.Webmasters have claimed that their site will only show for keywords that are not competitive.

It also appears this effect does not affect new pages unless the domain is in the sandbox.

Have in mind its still a theory, even an excuse for certain SEO "experts". I'd rather believe you are doing something wrong.

 

There is no sandbox if your over aggressive on link building with a new site google will make you wait longer for good SERPS. But there is no sandbox

 

Ive noticed something strange with my blog and im not sure if it has something to do with the Sandbox. The niche of my blog is not that big so most of my posts were visible within a couple of hours and usualy top 10 in Google each and every time without fail. Now within the last week it has taken google 4,5,7 days to index that post and in general the blog does not seem to have the strength that it had before.

Also within the last week i noticed that Google only downloaded my Sitemap.xml once where as before it was being downloaded daily!!!

If my blog has been placed into the Sandbox does that mean Google still index's our pages or not?

Any answers or comment would be greatly appreciated.
Danny

 

this is not the elusive sandbox, i will guarantee it and havent even looked at your blog yet. just saw Ibiza and was drawn in....
but you dont get suddenly "sandboxed" when youve been up and running its allegedly a launch phenomena.

edit, ok have looked now. you could make the blog a lot friendlier SEO wise though. get the All in One SEO pack plug in and get it rewriting your pagenames with the post-titles for a start.

eg, http:// blog. solorecordsibiza.com/?p=117 ..that's not an seo friendly URL it should say "/filthy-gorgeous-on-tour-australia.html"

the blog is #4 for "solo records" which it wouldnt be if you were in any kind of real trouble. what terms do you think you should be ranking for better?

 

Thanks for the reply and advice as im only a novice at this and i do appreciate the comments and feedback. So i suppose the quick indexing was due to the blog being quite new then?

Ill get the plugin and try it
Thanks
Danny

 

Whether you call it sandbox or trust/age filter or whatever, the effects are very real, and have been for a few years now. Its easy to check if your site is effected by it.

If you're ranking well for your keyword under
inanchor:
intitle:
intext:

but coming up nowhere on the default search, then you're in the sandbox/age filter, etc

 

I dunno about "sandbox" but there are other factors that may be having an impact: Excessive pinging, duplicate content, and keyword stuffing quickly come to mind.

To explain -- Wordpress default pings pingomatic whenever there's a new post or edit. Ten bucks says your frequent Googlebot crawls at launch were from the pings, and they've dropped off now because your pinging is being ignored. MaxBlogPress offers a ping optimizer plugin that could prevent you from being tagged a ping spammer.

Second, there doesn't seem to be a robots.txt file telling googlebot not to index the duplicate content WP always generates. See: http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:blog.solorecordsibiza.com+solorecordsibiza&hl=en&start=90&sa=N&filter=0

Lots of dupes, my friend.

Finally, I can't help but notice the word "Ibiza" appears an excessive number of times on EVERY page, in link text, URLs, and body text. I didn't run Webposition or SEO Elite on your site, but if you'd like, I can.

I also noticed your sitemap shows all post pages with a .1 priority and daily changes. Three quarters of those pages haven't been changed in a month. Why not set your posts to at least a .6 with monthly changes on your sitemap?

 

My experience is that if a site (even if it is a strong main domain) starts to spit out pages the engines will send it into "the sandbox", this can also happen if there is a aggressive link building campaign. But once that it has been "validated" it comes back out. In order for the pages to come back to decent rankings you have to be a bit patient, the most I have seen it about 3-4 months

 

please if anybody can point me to a sandboxed site i'd love to see one?

 

My site's still sandboxed after 3 months - doesn't appear for site:www.mysite.com, doesn't show up in a direct search for the URL, only its backlinks do.

I'm going to try a little test...I'll give it a valid PR6 backlink from my work website and see what happens in a few weeks. I wonder if it will show up in Google.

 

From what I've seen, google at times will give new sites the benefit of the doubt so to speak and doesn't seem to apply all the filters to it right away, especially if it has quite a few links. However, they can throw you to the sandbox right quick and usually do within a month. If you keep at your site, it should start ranking for some phrases within 4-6 months I think.