If a site changes its keywords - eg moving from one town to another - will this be enough to trigger a sandbox effect? Or a Google filter effect?
I've read on a previous post in this forum that someone believed that significantly changing the keywords in a metatag could cause Google to treat your site as a new site. Therefore I asked if changing the keywords - ie targetting town b rather than town a in your metatags as well as in the site content - could trigger a sandbox effect or a "new filter" effect?
I think time has now answered my question: YES!! We have a website website design bury st edmunds that had been optimised for website design hadleigh. We then moved to bury st edmunds and changed the optimisation to website design bury st edmunds. For 3-4 months I worked and worked on SEO improvements; every time Google found a change it would give us a quick boost for a few hours and then the next time I checked we would be down to no 9 in the serps. Nothing I did seemed to change this. Then 1 day, out of the blue, we went up to no 6, then to no 5 a few days later, then no 4 and now we're no 2 or 3, depending which version of Google you use. Not wonderful, but better. Either this was a filter that Google had inflicted on us cos we changed from website design hadleigh to website design bury st edmunds or else it was a massive leap because our site suddenly became a year old - coincidence or not, the "filter" was lifted at about the 1 year mark.
In fact I think the answer is no from your experience. The sandbox means that your site is completely not even listed on google. Obviously when you change keywords your not going to be at the top straight away. It is almost like starting again, you have to work yourself back up to the top! Good luck with your site! By the way, im from Cambridge and have played against the Bury rugby team many times Josh