let me say this first. The sandbox imo exsist's but only for more competitive keyword terms.. proof that the sandbox may not exsist (at least for less competitive ky) do a search for joe whyte seo http://www.google.com/search?q=joe+whyte+seo&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US the second result in google is joe-whyte.com and that was just created about a week ago. sandbox should be arond 8 months if anyone finds this interesting can yo uplease give me positive rep points as for some reason I dont have many.
/nod Why would google want to sandbox sites for terms that never get searched? that wouldn't make much sense and would make google about 8 months outta date..
It is for competative keywords. In addition to that, they URL would be expected to rank decently anyway.
Matt Cutts from google confirmed this a long time ago. Google DOES have something that could be considered a sandbox (they call it something else), but that it doesn't apply to all keywords. Anyone can rank well for a keyword no one searches for, it's competitive keywords that get sandboxed. The sandbox doesn't mean you can't rank well, it means your backlinks aren't factored in when determining SERPS - which makes it extremely difficult to rank well for a competitive keyword during this time.
Ian, of course I wish you well wish your site, but I've had sites rank for a couple of months and then disappear; apparently sandboxed. I certainly don't pretend to be a sandbox expert, but it's like new sites with fresh content are given a chance in the SERPS before any sandbox effect kicks in. If you get back to us in a few months and are still ranking well, then I'll eat my words of course.... <edit>Just noticed he's banned..... LOL</edit> Cheers, Paz.
IMHO the sandbox doesn't even exist for competitive keywords. I recently worked with with a guy to SEO his site, and whilst we weren't primarily focussing on the most competitive keyword in the industry we managed to gain a number of top 10 rankings for semi-competitive keywords (many top 5 listings as well) in addition to being ranked 25th the primary term in the industry (which gets around 40,000 searches a day and is obviously competitive) all after about 1 month of link building. I believe these results are largely to do with the fact that the sites were highly relevent and aged with close to the highest PR in the industry. It's costing him a fair few dollars a month, but he has the rankings and he achieved them quickly!
How old was the domain? Google has already said it exists - which just confirms what has been known for a long time. A 25th ranking doesn't seem to prove anything.
The domain is also only 1 - 2 months old. Ranking 25th I thought was a fairly impressive result after such a short time considering all those ranked above them have been running their sites in the industry for ATLEAST 2-3 years.
The sandbox doesn't mean your site is excluded from ranking well, it's just extremely difficult without backlinks being factored in. While 25th is certainly better than #100 - you want to be in the top ten to get significant traffic - at least in my experience. Sometimes a new site can rank high for a short period of time, but I haven't seen a top 10 ranking for a competitive keyword before a domain is at least 3 months old - and it can be up to a year, depending on the sector/keyword.
In addition to the non-competitive nature of the keyphrase, the key might be that the page was created a week ago. A lot of my new sites get good google listings and then they fall out from, the rankings. If the sandbox exists, I have never come out of it
It does exist even for small keywords. Report back in a few months and let us know if your site is still listed.