No the "sandbox" theory is far from rubbish. There is just too much evidence of sites that in the past would have had high SERP placement not receiving that placement for extended periods of time. Remember it only seems to apply to SERP placement for reasonably competitive search terms or keyword phrases. Maybe it is only implemented for English sites. That would make sense, I think.
How to avoid the sandbox: Think long-term. Readjust expectations. Plan ahead. Spend 6 months or more developing a killer site and getting links to it from a wide variety of sources. Do the wahtoosie dance when it starts ranking 6/9/12 months after launch.
In other words Dazziln, there is no sandbox for those with patience. The problem is that we have come to expect instant results and gratification via the Internet. Look at all the people who are still convinced that some insignificant change they make in the morning is the reason or explanation for their SERP jumping 3 places in the afternoon. It just doesn't work that way. SEO is a long term procedure.
Prior to Florida, how long did it take to get good rankings using active SEO? I wonder if sandboxing was a lingering algo effect after florida? Dave
A much shorter amount of time, Dave. Someone with the ability to throw a lot of good links at a site in a short time could rank well in the next update (usually a month). More average time frame was 2-3 update cycles (~ months). I think the slower cycle began with Florida, but was tweaked and intensified sometime in April. It's all about "what used to be" vs. "what now is". For those who argue against the existance of the sandbox (regardless of exactly how it is defined), they've either been lucky, or they weren't around to see "what used to be". (Ooh, I feel a flame coming my way now). So, now, I tend to just accept "what now is" and go with the flow. What else ya gonna do?
In my opinion the initial sandboxing of most sites is because Google just doesn't think it's of any importance. If you don't have enough backlinks coming to your site why would google think was important. I've personally seen a site that was ranking in the top ten for many different search terms in about 2-3 weeks. The site I'm refering to is Mighty Goods and when they announced they immediately had a lot of back links from a lot of high ranking sites. Some of the links were from the CSS Vault, Style Gala, NY Times, and Stopdesign. Also note that these were all one way links. As you can see this is an exception to the norm but it should show that it is possible with enough back links. Also note that the alexa ranking for this site is 362,322 after about 2 1/2 months. The URL for Mighty Goods is http://www.mightygoods.com
This took me the longest to learn. The folks that take the time to learn and do this business with the "long term" in mind, will be much more pleased with their results. Cricket P.S. Good to see ya Bob!
I had domains not ranking with google, I'd gottem them countless links, they had pr they simply should just should rank. So, I did a 301 redirect for the entire domain onto the back of one of my existing domains on the same topic. The exisiting domain ranked well already. PRESTO within a week I had all the rankings I wanted. Content wasn't the problem the sandbox was. I've copied this serveral times over several domains. All with massive sucess, hope it helps.
So take your old domain, the sandboxed one I use php <? header("HTTP/1.1 301"); header("Location: http://www.NONsandboxed-domain.com/content-here-in-a-subfolder"); ?> PHP: There's not much else to explain.... Preferably have the sandboxed domain and the ranking domain on the same content.
As far as I know, you can't avoid your new site getting sandboxed. The only way is to get an old domain.
Some months ago I got this from a bulletin and posted on a notebook. "Some advice has been given to have companies you are going to reciprocate back add your link first to the website. This may help grandfather your site in, thus reducing the waiting time associated with "new" websites. People have noticed a 0 page rank when first signing up and receiving a bolstering 7 page ranking after 4 months. Why the delay? The fact is, that if people realized how easy it would be to get a high ranking, would that take away the credibility of the engine. It depends on whom you ask, but it does seem to be happening frequently to newer subscribers. Do not discontinue back linking, your rank will eventually appear."
it usually takes me 2-3 months to get out of the sandbox... although it can take much longer, depending on your backlinks, page count and competition I think. The 301 tip is good, gonna try that some time. Thank you.
I'm in a fairly competitive field and I'm #1 allinanchor and #136 in the SERPs. I have only noticed my site rank well for 1 term I didn't mean to totally optimize for. The end result: 1-2 visitors per day. Yet still almost all my visitors are from google... How is this so with the sandbox? The sandbox is synonymous with "spend money on AdWords we're done ranking new sites." Cheers.
You might want to take a closer look at: http://www.vwsites.com/ The problem I see is you have google adds at the top, and a tower on the right side.. Careful. Google suspends accounts using more than one set of adsense links on a site. Just an FYI.
That's news to me.. Used to be their TOS strictly forbad this. I now of two people that actually got suspended because of it. Can you show me where in the TOS this is allowed now? Thank you for letting me know.
Interesting.. Thanx. Wonder what made them change this. I am pretty certain it was not always that way. Thanx again!