You're correct Jeet.... You CAN have Pagerank and still be in the sandbox. I've seen new sites that have been up for six weeks or so pick up visible PR. It just depends on if you hit the cycle right prior to the next Google toolbar PR update. By the way, the sandbox can hit old sites as well as new. I've seen it happen to sites that have had a major redesign, or even sites with low backlinks that start running heavy link campaigns
Hi Jlawrence, Thanks for your view on the phantom sandbox and thank you for stating that it is just your view and not absolute fact, (like so many self-proclaimed experts do). In the past few months I've paid particular attention to webmasters asking about the sandbox, and the best I can recall, all of them could not find their site in the top 1,000 pages returned. That is what caused their frustration. The three to twelve months you mention could, at least partly, be due to the adding of new reciprocal links and the time it takes google to factor them in on their next BL export. Plus, if the site contains useful content it will gradually gain natural links during that time period. You mentioned "for your main keywords", but what about our other keywords? Can we rank well there? And how does Google know which keywords are our "main" keywords? You also mentioned that the ending of the sandbox, in your opinion, is dependent on the competitiveness of the keywords. There's another slippery slope. Most webmasters think the number of pages indexed by Google are a measure of the keywords' competitiveness. I'm talking about this info: "Results 1 - 100 of about 40,900,000 for webmasters. (0.11 seconds)" They think the 40 million is a measure of the competitiveness of the keyword "webmasters". They forget that the SE is just reporting the number of pages in it's database which contain "webmasters". (Actually, we know absolutely nothing about the pages beyond 1,000, we can never see them and just trust in their existence). Just cuz one of my pages contains "webmasters" does in no way mean that I am competing in that market. Other webmasters will use the frequency of the keyword search. For example, checking with the overture suggestion tool. At first glance, this seems more accurate, but still, just because 2,000 searches are done everyday for 'link exchange', in itself, does not mean 'link exchange' is more competitive than a keyword searched only 1,000 times/day. The number of searches done, is a measure of the consumer demand, not the aggressiveness of the sales organizations. So, how in your opinion, would Google be measuring the competitiveness of the "main keywords" for each and every new site in the world? Bompa
The "sandbox" by most popular definitions pertains only to new sites. According to most people that are deluded by this term, it is not to be used interchangeably with any other type of penalty. It is an illusion reserved exclusively for new sites. When you say you've seen "it" happen, what did you see happen? Bompa
I had wrote a FAQ on my blog about the Google Sandbox a few months ago. Hopefully, this is useful and helpful to some of you: http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf/2579/
Define a new site . what you are referring to is a new domain. My personal opinion is that G discount backlinks into a new domain for a certain period of time. I'm guessing that they only discount links based on what they deem the primary keywords to be - this would be what the page is optimized for and what exists in anchors. I know that a new site can rank for longer keyphrases - mostly inconsequential ones. I have sites that rank in the top 10 for allinanchor yet they are at 300 or below for normal searches (and they have been for months). I think that the competitiveness of a keyword is derived from the number of search returns for that keyword. The less returns, the less time I site seems to spend in the wilderness. I have seen existing sites drop into the sandbox (by my definition of it) when a) a major site redesign is done or b) a massive link campaign is started, but it doesn't seem to affect all sites in the same way. I find that older sites tend to jump back out of the 'box far quicker than a new one would (often within days or weeks).
Exactly, i have a 3 months old blog with PR5 and still stuck in sandbox, just released recently after 6 months.
Ugh...that's not what I've gathered from the myriad of posts and articles I've read over the last year and half. As well as my own experience managing 30+ sites. If you spend some time reading through the posts here on DP you'll find many that feel the sandbox isn't just about newly launched sites. But then, as you say, there are many views on the subject. It's nice to know you at least seem to know what's REALLY going on. Care to share your sources with us?