Can links speed up the "new website penalty" that Google seems to give most new websites - or will this penalty last for x months regardless of links? For example, some local websites that I do spend the first 4-5 months towards the bottom of p1 and then suddenly rise up to the top/near the top with no links being built. If a customer is desperate to get a new website ranking well quickly, will links speed up the penalty process/artificial lowering process? Obviously, links help website long term. I am not asking whether links help - just if they can speed up the "new website penalty".
Based on my experiences, no, not really. I've got hit on most new sites and building links didn't seem to help. The only way i've found to avoid getting knocked of the search results is to just plain not building any links for a few months after being indexed. Just maybe a few here and there.
The Google Sandbox last for two page rank updates and any links help. But the clock starts the first time Google indexes your page. When we build a new site, we create a dummy home page on day one, submit it to Google and link to it from our home page. Then we start the web design process. This give us a major head start. Our link to the new site draggs it into Google the way they like it. We submit it thru the new website Webmaster Tools. At the same time, we do limited link building. If the new site does get hit with the sandbox, it's less than 2 months or two PR updates. This gets the home page performing for the home page keywords. Internal pages are different, they start ranking when both internal links and PR is assigned to it. Notice the Google gray bar on pages, this is duplicate content penalty usually. That page will never rank until that page obtains PR.
there is no such penalty, I have created a site and had it to 30,000 visitors by mostly google within three months. Create unique content and build links.
For local searches, I usually find that the site starts off towards the bottom of p1 and then after x months suddenly rises up towards the top of p1 without my building any links. I have also had a site suddenly go from p7 to p1 after 7 months with almost no links. This has led me to conclude that Google keeps new websites artificially low for a time and I wondered whether links could reduce this "penalty period"?