Hi there, I am new to the forum and have found a lot of useful ressources here already. Regarding Googles sandbox, I have two questions that I haven't been able to find answers for so far. 1) How do you decide if a term i competitive or not? (With sandboxing apparently only happening to websites targeting competitive terms, this would be very nice to know). 2) If a site have been indexed for a while, but have not targeted anything competitive and suddenly ranks high on a competitive term, will it still risk sandboxing?
1 - I think it's the number of results in Google for that particular keyword and also some overture data - how many searches per day does the keyword have - but I'm not sure if this really is how Google determines the sandbox. 2 - In my opinion if a site already ranks high for a competitive keyword, there is no way to go back to sandbox. You can just get a penalty if you violate Google rules or they can even ban your domain (e.g. because of duplicate content).
Thanks for the reply. But on question 2, I was wondering, if I own a site that had previously adressed the mating habits of canadian woodchucks in the first year of its lifetime, but then change the subject to loans, would the site then risk sandboxing, when ranked high for the competitive keyword?
I think in such case there is the risk of being sanboxed if you completely change the subject of your domain. However, I have no experience with this and cannot confirm it - it's rather just my guess, but I think it would go to the sandbox.