Initially ranking well is very common - only to see a site drop 2-3 weeks later. This is how google deals with most "new" sites. I personally wouldn't submit to 2,000 directories as it certainly doesn't look natural and there is no benefit to so many low quality directories regardless of your domain age. Google is about relevant, quality links - and domain age plays an important role.
Noticed the same thing for a website of mine started about half a year ago. Thanks for posting your results public. Reputation given.
thx, do not let it happen is something i learned now. my penalty started on 11 december, mayby i wait few more months. I like your way providing us this information. But don't like google's way of thinking. You (or me) could do this on someone else his website (blackhat)
you have tripped one of googles filters which is very common for a new site getting links fairly quickly..google will place the penalty on your site for 1-3 months and see if the links you gained are still present after that time..if they are those links wont look artificial or like paid links. My theory is that google does this to discourage link buying..if you buy links in hopes to a quick boost for a new site, you will likely cancel subscription on those links because you will reap no immediate benefit...give it time..it will come back..in my experience, when the site comes out of penalty it does much better than before it was penalized.
Yes I think that you tried to target some really competitive terms & in the process like Google always does is to initially rank you high for those keywords and then sandboxing. Now only thing u can do is build quality backlinks, so that u can come out of the sand box.
Hey thats good info. I'm about to start a new site and guess what? I was planing to do the same thing like you did. You saved my butt. Thanks a mil!
Aaron Walls wrote in his seobook that a website with only quality links have a great chance to be penalized, and recommend first to build few strong links to be safe. But, after a website grow, it will get naturally low quality backlinks, and for every strong backlink you can have 30-40 low quality backlinks in his opinion. I think that this is the sandbox effect, because it never ranked top. If a website is very little it can get at least page 2 or 3. When i started to build links for my first website i didn't know very well how things works, and i started to submit it to directories, i submitted to about 300, he didn't appeared in search results. One month later, i learned some things about seo and builded few good links, he got #27 on google. After a week, it went down to #160 or something like this. I got some traffic from that links i got, and i started to build links just for traffic, i almost gived up in the battle for google, but few months later ( 3,4 or 5, i can't remember very well ) i started to see in my stats traffic from google. When i checked out, it was #7 on google, i was annoyed, i thought it was a miracle, but now i'm sure that it was the sandbox effect. After one month, with few more links i got #4 for that keyword. I started to optimize for other keywords too, i was ketting only low quality links with those anchor text, and i easily got other 2 keywords #3 and #5.
Great article I have similar situation with one of my sites others are doing fine and I also think its cause of low quality links first. I prefer to add new page every 3-5 days and do it steady for 2 months and then slow it down. thanks
This is an extremely informative thread; reputation points coming your way for a lot of people who contributed! Now here's my question - after how long since a website has been launched are directory submissions safe?
seriously guys, these are classic symptoms of the sandbox. I know you said its similar to another site, but there is no way two sites can be exactly the same so the comparison is not valid. Does your site still rank for some very low rated keywords?
Good info, but it's only valid if the results are repeatable just like any non-seo experiment. I had the same thing happen but the site wasn't new, and i didn't submit to directories.. I've also got sites i pinged off a few thousand directory submissions and it's fine. Google just seems to be really unstable at the moment, quite a few sites have been effected just like this in the last 4-6 weeks and they have no common link.
It might be a sandbox if you might think. but other sites which are started at the same time do not got any negative results like this one. It seems how fast your link coming to your site in a short period is the key. Otherwise is how quality of your incoming link may be consider by Google. If all of links come from free sources, non-editorial, it may not even be counted. You have to mix them - quality and non-quality - in slowly and steady pace. Only unstable results I see now is in Google.com USA results but results in Google DC's or Google.com in other countries are fine. However, this site is "completely" gone. Not even top 100 in Google DC's for any search operators, even for allintitle. In my opinion, every new site has to be sandboxed but how hard of sandbox applied is up to your promotion method. Gained link too fast may cause your site dropped as a "whole" and hard sandbox (if you think) may applied on your site. I've had many sites which are sandboxed so I've experienced about sandboxed but this site is another case which is unlike other sites. If you think my site got sandboxed, it may be a hard sandboxed applied to. I never see something like this one for my other sites before. Conclusion : Watch out how fast of your incoming link and overall quality of your incoming link. Your incoming link should have both quality and non-quality in the beginning in a fairly amount. Why? Is it doesn't make sense if your site is new/very new and got incoming link from some authoritative sites/directories very quickly. Slowly building link at the beginning may be the key.
It looks like the low quality backlinks after giving an initial boost are devalued in a few weeks time. The process also seems to trip a spam filter.
Seriously mate, i respect your view on this and i know many other people say the same thing. In fact, i used to also claim the same thing on other forums. The fact of the matter is, that in MY experiance since, this has not happenned. I actually think it is very rare for a site to be really banned due to low quality links. I have one site, which i dont care much for, and it consistes of only a front page. I did a directory submission and nothing else. The site was in the sandbox and after around 6 months it started coming out of it. Ranked pretty well for non competative terms and once i started targetting the more competative terms, it raised steadily in the serps. This site has nothing but low quality links. All directories and blogposts. I will bet a crispy dollar bill that your site is in the box and will come out eventually. Comparing sites is useless unless you can demonstrate that they have the exact same attributes. And we know thats pretty much impossible. Try it, get a multi hosting account from netfirms for some fun experiments and see what happens.
Another thing you have to look at is the industry average of inbound links. If most of your competitors have only 200-300 and you show up with 20,000 it would be sure to trip a spam filter. I would also guess that if you have enough link juice you would bypass the filters.