I am sick and tired of all these lousy myths about the Google Sandbox. Based off of my three year experience in SEO I can honestly tell you through experimentation of 4 sites how long it lasts. This "new page probationary period" does not last forever. It is not a penalty. It does not matter if you place 1000 links in one day or 10 links a day for a year. You will be put in the Sandbox regardless. Domain age also does not matter. It is the age of the page for a particular keyword. How long has the page been indexed for the keyword in other words. In August 2009, I started a site with zero competition and only 2,000 competing pages. It took 2 months to get out of the Sandbox and rank #1. In October 2009, I started a site with moderate competition and 40,000 competing pages. It took 7 months to get out of the Sandbox and rank #4. In May 2010, I started a site with low competition and 40,000 competing pages. It took 4 months to get out of the Sandbox and rank #4. In May 2011, I started a site with low competition and 30,000 competing pages. It took 4 months to get out of the Sandbox and rank #6. Currently, I am working on a site that I started in March 2012. It has low competition with over 4,000,000 competing pages. It currently is in the Sandbox. It has been 7 months so far. Based on my experimentation, I can conclude that the lower the competition and competing pages the faster the Sandbox expires. Enough with the myths about penalties. I have said this once and I will say this again: Links cannot and will never hurt you! In fact, I bought a service which gave me 40,000 backlinks from link farms. Did it hurt me? No. It helped me in fact! Not much, but just a little. Hope this helps because all of the threads in the Sandbox forum are not helpful for newbies a all!