How can anyone knows whether your are in a sandbox or not? what link is it in the google where can you find all the sandbox sites? what I mean is this ex. www.google.com/dir/sandbox.html or whatever... it is? does anyone knows about it?
It is one example of sandbox detection tool. It currently measures the difference between factors like # of backlinks, size of site, PR, etc. against the average of the top 10 ranking competitors using some fairly advanced quadratic formulas to do the math http://www.socengine.com/seo/guide/sandbox-march-filter.html
You often see old sites with few links ranking well. It is link devaluation. The answer is links Always links, and make sure they are from different c class. Use the phone!