Have any of you ever avoided the sandbox?

Have any of you been able to avoid the sandbox with a new site?

It seems no matter what i do, I always end up getting the filter slapped on me.

 

You cannot avoid the sandbox because noone knows what causes a site to be sandboxed in the first place.

 

I believe it is competitiveness of keywords targetted vs. authority-ranking of site.

Obviously if you are the BBC or CNN, you are not going to have your new pages or sections filtered. Authority wins out. For the other 10 million of us not at that level, I think the competitiveness determines how filtered the result is. I just started a new site that is filtered for every 'valuable' phrase... but a new product name that is basically a made up word, I'm already in the top 10. It is getting a lot of searches right now, but the competitiveness is low... the filter level is low... with enough IBLs, the product specific page ranks.

 

If you do a search for Christopher Walken, you'll find www.walken2008.com . That site was just developed a few months ago. No sandbox filter. Ranks great.

The sandbox is a tricky beast. It takes getting enough authority links. In some niches, you're never going to jump right out of the sandbox, because authority sites will have no reason to link to you.

Until you're out, you have Y! and MSN traffic to feed you.

 

How can you be certain you are in the sandbox?

 

I did it with camerahelpers.com back when I first launched it. (later sold it)

I put it up, added it to my sig on multiple forums and it was a PR4 one month later because I built it right before the Google update and got it spidered in time.

 

Nice going mate. I would have done the same thing with it.

Regards,

Admans

 

I've avoided the sandbox once with not too popular keywords.

 

being indexed has nothing to do with being sandboxed

the walken site, might not be a good example because it appears to be pretty non-competitive, there is no one buying adwords for that term

 

Yeah... Ok...

You aren't automatically placed in the sandbox - there are flags raised if you do certian things with/to your sites which get you placed in there...

Old domains work wonders...
I have a site launched recently that has had nothing (well, pretty much nothing) on it for about 3 years...
Within a matter of days of redeveloping this site it's getting page 1 and 2 listings for pretty competitive keyphrases...

Just buy old domains.

 

really?

I had some older domains that didn't seem to work on

the only one that it worked on was an older domain with decent pr and link pop

 

Is that old domains as in pre-existing that you purchase from the owner, or old domains that expire and you grab with Pool? I assume expired and grabbed domains suffer the same penalties as new ones.

 

Well it's certianly working for me...

I think the key is time... Just don't rush *anything* and it will rank well... (Y! and MSN are another thing altogether, but this certianly works for me on the big G).

 

probably that's what i mean by the statement "nobody knows what causes a site to be sandboxed"

Those factors are totally unclear, too sensitive, too diverse and too dynamic. Google seems to be always tweaking those factors.

Perhaps some filters are triggered regardless of content and the site has already been sandboxed...even if empty

 

SEbasic do you rekon it matters if they are expired domains? Like this

www.pro-earth.com

EDIT sorry didn't see the new posts...

 

Buy a used, expired domain and put new content on it... best of both worlds... no sandbox, free traffic and a new site

 

Google for "Expired domain penalty" and you'll find some threads at WMW that say when a domain expires, G adds a penalty similar to the new domain sandbox.

 

I have a site in a fairly competive terrain that i launched a month ago. It was definitely in the sandbox - not coming up in the results at all, although it was spidered.

All i did, was to get some links, and it seems from a week back, to be rising steadily in the results. First appeared at around 500, then went to around 300, and is now at 231 - will let you know if it gets near the first page!

So far, it looks to me as if you can get out if you have enouh links.

 

Indeed VbMechano. Thanks for the refresher

 

I agree with you that inbound links will make your site appear closer to the top 10 serps but it never goes anywhere beyond the top 50 results. I've observed that this happens only to light - medium sandbox effect. Heavily sandboxed sites don't respond to anything