No Google member has ever said anything about a sandbox. They say that there are filters that would give a similar effect to a sandbox but what is important to remember is that these are filters as part of an algorithm. If you're site is strong and all the other off-page SEO is stronger than your competitors then you can counteract these filters. How much stronger than your competitors you have to be depends on numerous factors such as how new your site is, what trust it has built up, number of pages etc I know from experience of ranking brand new sites for very competitive keywords that these filters get gradually weaker as the site ages. Remember, many of your competitors won't have filters working against them so you have to be much stronger in other departments. Try using allinanchor: keyword to see where you stand in terms of backlinks. If you're site is not on the first page then you won't rank anywhere with a new site. I have seen old sites with no filters rank one or two places higher than me with a much less impressive backlink profile. But, if I didn't have a much more impressive profile than they did, I wouldn't even be close to them. I think Google's view on this is, any worthwhile new site is going to have lots of links pretty quickly. There is enough information out there already without Google having to worry about your also-ran site. Does the world need your site? If yes, you're going to have lots of links pretty quickly and counteract the filters. If no, not many are going to link to your site and thus you won't have enough to beat the filters. Having a mandatory sandbox effect for all new sites would be depriving searchers of great new sites. Having a filter system would prevent people from churning out more unimpressive sites. I think its a fair system. The people who experience a binning of their new sites could well be victims of other filters such as unnatural backlinks. If you're gonna SEO a new site fast to beat the filters, you have to have natural links, or at least natural-looking. One new site of mine in a very competitive field gained 4700 links in 3 weeks and is now enjoying good rankings. The difference between getting ranked and getting boxed was that these were high quality, varied, natural in-content links from quality content submitted over the web. Create a buzz about your site, either by having a great site and telling the right people, or by having great content that you are willing to distribute freely and contribute to your community with the hope of getting backlinks.