Hi, I was wondering if anyone could give me some specific information on google's sandbox. In particular what I want to know is that are entire sites sandboxed, or does it work down to independant pages? For example, If several pages are added daily will older pages come out of the sandbox before more recently added ones on the same site, or do they all come out at the same time? Could be an idiotic question, but I'm an idiot.
The papers all refer to a site as a 'document'. Apparent delays in my experience are always applied to the entire document though because there could be many pages within this one 'document' chances are you will rank well for obscure phrases. Though that doesn't mean you aren't flagged for being too young. Document growth and links to documents are key elements according to the filed papers. If indeed it;s applied to the entire document, the entire site should 'come out' in one go. But then again, nothing of all this is exact science, at least not outside Googleplex.
The sandbox applies to the entire domain. Google doesn't factor in backlinks for ranking purposes on new domains, or older domains that have changed ownership. It doesn't affect backlinks shown, PR, or indexing. Once you get out of the sandbox (3 months plus), google will count your backlinks when determining your rankings. There are other google penalties that can affect your rankings (hidden text, over optimization, etc) but this isn't the sandbox. New domains can still get traffic from google as backlinks are not the sole factor in determining rankings - but a top ranking for a highly competitive keyword that doesn't get the benefit of any backlinks is almost impossible.
I have a question as well. When you're sandboxed, is that for all your main keywords or only high competitive keywords? Because I'm ranking high for one of my secondary keywords, but for my main keyword I'm nowhere in the index.