In www.google.com my site appears on page 2 for my keyword. In www2.sandbox.google.com my site appears on page 7. Any idea why there is such a discrepancy...and more importantly, does the sandbox foreshadow what will eventually migrate to google's main site? ie. will my site drop to page 7 eventually?
Matt Cutts has stated in an interview that "there are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn't apply to all industries" Sandbox in my oppinion is where all the new websites are, then from there came out.
Thank for the response! How old does a site have to be before it's considered not new anymore? I registered my site last November so it's close to 10 months old.
I think that my last site was listed in Google after a few weeks. I have work a little bit to otain as many inblund links as possible.
Sandbox is intended for testing for Google features. I would not suggest take that into account for SERP ranking purposes.
Thanks for the info. I was pretty worried that the sandbox code would migrate into production google and drop my SERP down several pages.
The www2.sandbox and the infamous "sandbox" (a condition of sites being suppressed in the results due to insufficient age) are not related.
I think the sandbox is more part of the algorithms and not a server(s). The way I understand it is that some niches, such as Gambling, are kept at this sandbox status longer than other niches. Also mass building of backlinks can trigger the sandbox and that it is the reason many sites will drop far back in the SERPs after mass link building but come back strong in several days. To me it seems to be some sort of anti-spam filter.
Thanks guys. How does Google determine the age of a site? I registered my site using NetFirms. It shows as being registered November, 2008...but Alexa doesn't "see" this data. Do Google and Alexa both get their site age info from the same place?
Alexa only cares about traffic, so if there was no traffic to your domain it won't show on Alexa. Probably the same situation with Google, your domain needs to have been old, containing content, and active, not just registered a long time ago.
Thanks mono! That makes sense. I originally launched as a flash site (insert eye-roll here! ;-). I've since created a landing page that is better optimized for my keywords and am adding text content on an on-going basis. Traffic to my site is up 500% from what it used to be...but I haven't achieved google page 1 yet. I'll remember the mantra....content is king...content is king... ;-)