Google's Aging Delay for New Sites

Is that not just an excuse, e.g. I can not get ranked because google has put me in the sandbox.

 

Many people seem to rely on that

There is definately some kind of age filter in operation in Google at the moment though. I have a site that is #1 for allinanchor: inanchor: good on-page optimisation, a highy IBL count and has been live since September, yet doesn't even show in the SERPS yet. Most people see the same thing.

 

In my experience it's like a push of the button at the google machine. One day you have 50 to 100 visitors from google on some words you dont even target, and one day you have thousends a day on all keywords that are related to your site. If your out YOU WILL notice it.

Second you can backlink whatt you want you can write what you want but it will not show in the serps when you ARE in the sandbox. If you are out, and you write an article and you are using good content with the usual seo stuff you in the serps the other day. even in good places and even in higly targeted KW. like the link on top (rss feed) highly targeted KW in the serps next day after posting it to my site.

It is not an excuse to do nothing in the first moths, you have to build links, write content etc... But thats mainly for the long run when your out.

But again it's only my experience not an expert talking.

 

We should do a really simple test to check.

Choose a really obscure keyword and add a backlink from an established site to a new site/domain. Make sure the keyword is not mentioned in the text of the new webpage so its not ranked because of onpage factors. If the site is ranked inside a month then there is no sandbox and the delay is caused by the competitiveness of the keyword, if it fails to rank in 1 month+ then there is a delay.

 

Well that's just what the sandbox is about. It's no problem to rank for an obscure word or fantasy word.

 

HansV, are you saying the more competitive the keywork the longer the sandbox is?

 

From my own experience I would say that with really non competetive words there is no sandbox. I was ranked from day one, well very soon for kw like Druuna ( comics ) and for example the artist names. But the real competetive KW like Erotic art, nudes etc... exactly after 9 months.

 

In my experience the "sandbox" nukes everything, non competetive words included.
I had a #1 site and did a re-design.
No new links but the design and page names (site structure) were all different.
My site has been gone for over a month now, still being crawled but nothing in the SERPS.
Not even very obscure words, my last name...whice is rare.
Sucks, so now I wait.

 

are you saying that you had an existing site, re-designed it, and it fell of of the SERPs? That is horrible news.

 

You can rank for non-competitive keyword because even with any filters there is little/no competition, this would not mean that the filters are not applied, just that you dont feel them.

My keywords are "always" in the top 60 and my branch of sites feel this affect, thankfully I have my "daddy" site which can send traffic until such a time as google accepts the content.

 

This doesn't prove anything man. Show me your top 10 listings on a keyword that gets over 1000 searches a month from Overtures tool and commands at least .50 to .75 a click in PPC. If you have rankings like that, I will give your story some credence. The sandbox doesn't prevent you from being indexed, it prevents you from ranking for competitive keywords.

 

I do SEO on over 60 travel sites. Until the last update, all 16 that had been stared after March 2004 were sandboxed. Last week I had two escape and another that I think has escaped this week although I will probably need to check the rankings again in a week to be sure. For my sites, Sandbox is not being able to rank in the top 100 to 200 SERPs for competitive keywords (ie. City Name Hotels) despite being optimizaed correctly and being in the top 10 for the same phrase using the allinachor. The 100 to 200 goes way up in more competitive cities like Las Vegas or New York so I imagine it depends on the market. The thing is since I have 30 other sites that do have numerous top 10 listings, I know that the techniques I use work. Furthermore, since I just had two sites escape the sandbox and now "suddenly" list in the top 10 for city name hotels, I am sure that my techniques still work and that in fact some sort of aging filter is in place. However, my sites that have escaped are not the oldest nor do they have the most page rank or backlinks so there is no pattern that I can derive yet from my observations other than to say without a doubt that the "sandbox" does exist even if it's definatition is not as clear. I have had one site in the box for 11 months now. The one that escaped was made in July 2004. But at least having now had a site escape and rank how I more or less anticiapted it would, I can continue to use my techniques and just wait a little longer.

It really makes you wonder if the index size problem theory is true as there is no logical reason that Google would want to exclude the newest sites from its SERPs. I understand that page rank in a natural world would take time to accomulate but developing a system that says "oldest is always best" seems contrary to the idea of the web and Google's mission statement.

 

"are you saying that you had an existing site, re-designed it, and it fell of of the SERPs? That is horrible news."
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Yes, it's horrible.
I suck.

 

The sandbox exists. Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean that it's all an excuse.

You know you're in the sandbox if you're #1 (or somwhere near the top) for keyword allintext, allinanchor, allinurl and then you're somewhere like #400 for a natural search. Also, if you search for keyword: -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf, you can remove the sanebox filter and see your site's intended ranking.

 

I did exactly this and my new pages ranked within a few days and ranked well. They then disappeared for a few days, but are back now.

 

i am probably teh only person around who does not know this but what is "Google sandbox"?

 

i dont know either..

 

Ive seen brand new domains, ranking in the top 10 for allinanchor, allintitle etc and using the mcdar tool SHOULD be ranking on the first page, but they haven't, and no matter how many links you point to that domain it doesnt rank.

I was never a believer of the sandbox, but I definatly, think there is some filtering going on for new domains.

 

Same here, I have seen a slight delay but it was nowhere near as much as some quoted, and I have also seen sites for semi competitive keywords rank in the first month. I have read people saying they have come out the sandbox after 9 months+, this makes no sense at all for google to do this.

 

I agree that pages don't seem to get sandboxed. I just added a couple new pages on my site. Perhaps it's out of lack of competition but I started receiving traffic within 24 hours. Keep in mind however that they keywords are unique, i.e. names of local businesses.

Also something that you all may find interesting. My site has been real estate related for only about 10 months. Prior to that it had been a personal photo album built in frames and zero relevance for anyone outside a few friends and family.

It seems to have avoided the sandbox effect relating to real estate terms based entirely on its age. It had no IB links and naturally not SE friendly.
Once I converted it to a real estate site, I began climbing the charts immediately. I had top 10 rankings on some of the medium competetive keywords within just a few months, I am now top 10 for just about every term I care about.

I guess what I am saying is that just the fact that a site existed at the domain seems to have made all the difference, despite relevance. I purchased a better domain name almost immediately and had planned to move it but it began doing so well right where it was I scraped that idea.