I tried the seo moz tool but i have over 40,000 pages of dynamic content... how could i tell if my site is sandboxed? should i check a dozen keywords and see what my results are? my site info... 4 weeks since first spidered over 40,000 pages index Toolbar PR (from yesterdays update): PR 5 Google BL's: 20 MSN Bl's: 683 Yahoo BL's: 314 Getting almost 200 uniques a day from G.. What do you guys think? Thx -Dakman
The sandbox takes a minium of 3 months - some sites focusing on highly competitive keywords are said to remain in the sandbox over a year, although I have never experienced it lasting that long. At 4 weeks, you are certainly in the sandbox imo. Backlinks from relevant sites google considers authority sites are much more important than PR. You'll likely need a lot more backlinks showing in google if you are trying to rank well for a competitive keyword. Do a search on google for the keyword you want to rank for and then check the "inanchor" links of the top 5 or 10 ranking sites and that will give you a good idea of how many links you are likely to need to rank well. Sometimes brand new sites get traffic for a short period of time before it stops (freshness boost). Look at your logs and see what keywords google is sending you traffic for and then check what your google ranking is for that keyword. The sandbox is where google doesn't factor in your backlinks for SERP's. They still show and pass PR during this time. The sandbox doesn't affect traffic based only on your on page content.
himmm 99% of my keywords are low compete... so are you saying sandbox only affects high compeition kw's? you mentioned it doesnt have anything to do with onpage content factors... well since my kw's are low compete (and i can achieve rankings from onpage factors) do i have to worry about the sandbox still?
The sandbox just excludes backlinks from being counted when it determines SERP's. As backlinks are an important part of the google algorithm, it just makes it very hard, if not impossible to rank well for competitive keywords since the other sites you are competing with have the benefit of the backlinks counting. Backlinks aren't the only part of ranking, so the less competitive the keyword, the easier it is to rank for in general- so it makes ranking based on on page factors or domain name alone a lot easier.... i.e. if there are only a few sites targeting the keyword, you are going to rank well because of lack of any competition. If you are ranking #1, then I wouldn't even worry about the sandbox. If you are ranking #10, then when you get out of the sandbox you could see an increase in your rank. Not all keywords are subject to the sandbox. Google targets a list of keywords that everyone is trying to rank for. Comparing your position to other sites ranking well is the best way to approach it. Even if the words are not sandboxed, you still want to increase your ranking so try to get as many inanchor links as those ranking ahead of you have. There is no magic way to tell if a site is sandboxed - some people even claim it doesn't exist. There are over-optimization penalties and other factors besides the sandbox that can keep you from ranking. The sandbox gets blammed in a lot of cases when it is really something else. The google patent talks about new sites being subject to different treatment, but it doesn't go into time frames.
I don't know that google specifically targets keyword sets.. I think people rank for lower competitive keywords simply because there is less competition. Since it seems to be a filter on backlinks, on lower in demand keywords, backlinks is going to be less of an issue to getting ranked.
From what I've read, to determine exactly if you are in the sandbox you have to make a search in google for allinanchor:keyword. If your site shows up in lets say top 10 for this search, and yet it is at position #599 for keyword, then you know that you are in the sandbox. You can check this with almost any google position tool. Also, if you are targetting keywords with less than 500,000 search results, and still not rank, then you probably just need more links.
My site sure must be sandboxed. The site went live in Jan of this year and I am nowhere ranking well for certain highly competitive keywords. Other less competitive keywords are doing quite well. I hear what google is saying about anti spam and the reason it is doing what it does, but penalizing good quality sites is unfair (which I hope you think mine is - check it out at http://www.theoffice4u.co.uk ) Is the fact they are also making billions of dollars through advertising influencing these factors??? Another solution?
so what does it mean if my allinanchor for a certain keyword, i'm ranked 30 out 46,200, but i'm not found anywhere (well i checked the first 100+ results) in google out of 25,900,000 Does this mean i'm still in the sandbox for this term?
Yes, you're probably sandboxed. You should be around position 30 in a normal search. That is taking into account that your site onpage factors are well optimized. This is a tool you can use to check that. http://www.searchenginegenie.com/google-rank-checker.html