Hi, I noticed something really weird. I have a site which is a pretty much authority from Google points of view, index pages nearly 10 million pages and so on. Whenever I linked to a new site of mine, that site almost instantly gets sucked into sandbox for sometime but if another site of mine that is credible and has a pretty good status instead gets a boost from the link. Is this normal? Does this shows that a new site/ a site with too less difference in terms of strength when linked has a bad effect to the new site? What do you think?
Your authority site should help the new site as much or more than the smaller one. Since it seems to have a negative effect instead, I would ask whether the observation is absolutely true or just a hunch because it is very difficult to track one or two actions to (cause) to actual results (effect). Also, is it just a link or two or are you overdoing it? Also, is the authority site truly authority? Authority is more about trust than size. Is it in the top 3 for most of its keywords? If not, it may not be an authority and if it is considered a bit spammy, that would do it. Additionally, are the topics the same? If the large site is off-topic it may seem unnatural. Last, is the new site linking to any 'maybe not very trusted' sites? Who you link to is the single most important.
New site often come to sandbox with many links. But with 1 or 2 link from authority sites, it' very good.
It depends on how and where you're placing those links. If it's on a Wordpress Blogroll or footer that's sitewide, for example, 10 million pages would mean 10 million links from your website to that new one which would mean definitely mean a sandbox effect would be possible if the new website you have has no established links back to it yet.