Two Years and no sandbox, Does it really exist?

Depends what you understand by Google Sandbox

 

If you are discussing being BANNED as being sandboxed - it does exist. my site landed in the abyss after too many ALT tags. An accident, of course, but banned for 18 months for sure.

 

if you have a picture gallery website, it is natural to add a lot of alt tags. are you sure that is the reason?

 

I had a lot of spacer images in the design (old design) - I put 3-4 words in each spacer image 5px X 1px (transparent color) - not a good combo. Was an accident, I didn't know better at the time. Turns out that it was a blessing. I learned more about SEO trying to figure out why I was banned - and have since taken every customers' site to Google's first page ever since. Oh well. Live and Learn.

 

Sandbox only exists for competitive keywords. I believe my site is in the sandbox for "webmaster forums".

 

yes i'm sure