well, I've got two questions (actully more like three) that I'm hoping somebody can answer here. 1. I launched a travel site back in Febuary (used a dropped domain) and not suprisingly said site gets well and truly stuck in google's sandbox. So I've been carrying out basic SEO (content and link building) since then. And after almost zero google traffic, over the last two weeks I've started to appear in the SERPs for a few holiday resort terms (mainly variations on one resort) and quite high in particular for the image SERPs for that term. Which is a bit odd as none of my SEO has been to do with that, and I would say the term is moderatly competitive. However it's still a complete no show for the main (highly competitive keywords) I have been targeting. My feeling is that google is "tasting" my site to see what happens. So am I starting to escape the sandbox? And I'm hoping there are other webmasters out there who have experienced this behaviour, that can tell me how long after this their site started ranking for their main more competitive keywords? On a seperate note, I've started to worry that I used a .com domain for my site (when it's a uk only site really), and maybe I should have used the .co.uk (which I own) and is just on a 302 redirect to the .com (the .co.uk isn't indexed in google). Although the .com is a uk ip address, and it's specified in google tools as being a .uk site, was this a major mistake on my part? And would I be better of switching to the .co.uk and redirect the .com to that. Or will this just knock me right back down to the bottom of the sandbox, and undo all my hours and hours of SEO work so far? Or will it have the opposite affect any help me escape a bit earlier? 2. Secondly I've had a domain for about a year now, that I used to try and start a car hire affiliate site on, I since scrapped this and merged it all into my main travel site and just did a 302 redirect using this to my main site (google hasn't picked up on this yet I think). This site appears to be out of the sandbox and I'm thinking about launching a custom directory on it. Will the major change in type of the site, knock it back into the sandbox or will it escape? Rather long I know but thought I better put all the details in as these questions have been bothering me for a while Thanks!
To reply to the .co.uk vs .com question, yes the .co.uk would have been a more logical choice and could have achieved higher rankings for searches on google.co.uk, however I won't call this a "major mistake". And why a 302 instead of a 301 redirect?
getting my 302s and 301s mixed up, I meant 301 so sounds like I'm better leaving it as it is on the .com then I guess.