from my experiences...that FAQ is WAYYY off. brasco, if your site is new...you probably are in the sandbox, use google.com/webmasters, verify your site, and if it shows that your site ranks top 20 for less than 5 search phrases, thats a good indication that you are sandboxed. Another way to check is to search for search terms related to your site..if your site appears at the very last page of the google SERPS's for all search terms...thats a good indication you're sandboxed. There is no sure way, so its best not to worry about it too much...Websites are like a fine wine...they keep improving with age.
I agree that the sandbox "FAQ" mentioned is not that good - too vague and subjective. A "test" for the sandbox where the outcome hinges on when you "get tired of looking and your fingers start to hurt" is pretty poor in my opinion. The FAQ doesn't mention anything about age factors (of domains, sites or pages), which most sandbox believers agree are very important. It doesn't say whether it's a "Google only" effect, or whether other search engines have it. It doesn't say what the possible causes of a site going into the sandbox are (e.g. age factors?, link growth?). Personally, I'm a sandbox sceptic. Until there is a reasonably definitive and objective test, there's nothing to discuss really (since the "in" or "out" judgement is purely subjective). Also - there's a lot of talk about more or less competitive keywords, which is fair enough, but again - what's a reliable and objective measure for "competitive"? Until we have these, there's no firm evidence or facts to discuss, so the discussion will go around in circles. Howard