Well I start to think the sandbox has nothing to do with my ranking at Google.com, Google is just too "dumb" to notice that I have to "same" sites except that one is in English and one is in German. I use two domains for these sites sandrabullock.de is the German one and #1 at google.de for the keyword sandra bullock since at least a year. When I search at google.com for sandra bullock my English site sandra-bullock.co.uk isn't even listed in the Top 1000 results although the current version of the site is of the same age as the German version. So does Google think it's duplicate content because the sites have the same design, keywords etc. ? What do you guys think ? I often heard that I shouldn't use two domains for "1" site but I consider it two sites because they are in a different language and doesn't microsoft.com and microsoft.de also only exist because of the different languages.
Microsoft.de and Microsoft.com are actually different. Perhaps the portal is the same, but once you get further you notice differences. Google checks duplicate content not only for visible text, but probably for way more, like the entire code. So it wouldnt surprise me if you really hit the duplicate content filters.
well I use German file names on the German site as well, like februar.htm versus february.htm and also the content is partially different, since the press archive with articles is not hosted on both sites but mixed to avoid duplicate links to the same article since the German/English articles are available on both sites... I also have different outbound link on the sites... but you still might be right because the CSS design of both pages is 100% the same, but I surely won't do two different designs just because of Google there must be another way around the issue.... shouldn't be lang:xml de and en be enough anyway?
you can add a language meta for the german pages (not really necessary for the english pages but won't hurt) and also submit each site to different sections of DMOZ.
well I am using language meta on both sites, I always did that... the English site is listed here http://dmoz.org/Arts/People/B/Bullock,_Sandra/ and the German site has been submitted to this category http://dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Kultur/Darstellende_Kunst/Personen/Schauspieler/B/Bullock,_Sandra/ 6 months ago, 3 months ago and again 1 month ago but didn't get indexed. I also tried to become an editor for these section but they didn't let me. And the stupid thing is the sites I suggested in my editor application were added short after they e-mailed me I can't become editor then I asked why and they said I suggested sites already in the directory, really stupid. The section has since then never been updated anymore and is totally out of date right now. I am also editor of the same section on Zeal where I added the site to the appropriate language categories, but not many people use Zeal actually.
Someone has an obsession with Sandra Bullock, eh... (she's not even that hot, unless you have a fetish for the butt in her face)
no I definitely wouldn't call it an obsession, my obsession is my girlfriend but I love doing the site because there are so many friendly people visiting
Your a guy, not going to tell you to take down you Sandra Bullock site (that would be stupid, seems to be making you money) but maybe you should try making like a website that's based around like: a) The times b) Majority of computer users if I was to make an entertainment site 2-3 years ago, I would make a Star War site, there's tons of nerds who like that shit, they always come back too, even after the trilogy you will still have traffic growing as nerds look for places to fill in the Star Wars addiction, and anyways, eh... Sandra bullock lol...
I made that site 8 years ago tho and that time Sandra Bullock was the queen of the web as she was called back then ....hmmm my sites just all got upranked to PR 5 also the site I thought is sandboxed got PR 5 from PR 0 so I guess Google does know my site is available on two domains in two languages. Now I will just wait for the PRed site to appear in SERPs. I think a site with PR 5 where the Top 10's average of competing sites is PR 3 won't stay long out of the Top 100.