Hello. I have over 10 sites in the Google Sandbox and I am wondering what other people's experience has been. All of my sites target VERY competitve keyword phrases (all of which get over 15K a month on the Overture search suggestion tool). So I know that the Sandbox targets highly competitve keywords, but has anyone found that the length of time in the sandbox depends on the topic of the site (and the competitivness of the keywords). For example I am in the travel market which is highly competitive. I am wondering if there are webmasters in less competitive fields (but still enough that there is a sandbox) who could share how long it took them to escape. Thanks.
I don't see any sandbox. Probably the anchor text density is too high or low. Try to adjust it. Don't try to imitate top-1 site's density. You won't know whether the density overshoot or not. Use top-100th site as reference, and move up slowly.
have you seen sites not listed in the top 100 serps that are top 5 for all in anchor just based on over optimized anchor text?
I am slowly starting to move out of the Sandbox. The main reason for it is the Coop Ad network, having moved up from 22 to 4 for allinanchor. But than my site is about 6 months old so it could be the sandbox letting go. In any case proceed as you would normally, build good content and get those backlinks with good anchors and you will start to shift. Also sign up for the coop, but use the weight sparingly across different pages with different anchor text, to avoid any possible over-optimisation penalties.
One question we need to ask: Can a **new site** that has won the allinanchor, allintext, and allintitle game, gets top10 ranking instantly? I never see this happen. And Google can understand this abuse.
From what I gather, the penalty is applied after the allins are done. Which is really the main symptom of the sandbox, when the allins are all around top 10 and the actual site still fails to make it into the SERPs. If your allins are not in the top 10 (or near) then your site is not optimised, in which case you should you should stop bitching about the Sandbox and get on with getting links, content, etc...
How do you know if your site is sandboxed? Does the following indicate mine is? In google: allinanchor:competitive terms allintitle:competitive terms allintitle:competitive terms My site has been for some time now been either 1 or 2 in Google. However it was no where to bee seen when actually searching for the "competitive terms". Since joining the co-op my site has remained in the number 1,2 allin* spots and has finally come in on the radar for the key phrases - using digital points keyword ranking tool. However still, my site seems to float for the competitive "keyword terms" between 60 and 100 and can't seem to reach the top 10. Second question/statement. In doing some tests I have seen a high correlation between google allin*:key term top 10 compared to actual google SERP results for the "key term". With that is it just a matter of time (ie.link age - no, I don't rely on the co-op as it wouldn't provide links that age) that my site in question reaches the top 10 for the competitive key terms I am targeting?
I totally agree. But I've many fairly new sites that only have allintext in top 10, and still get top 10 in the SERPs. I'm still not convinced of the 'sandbox' theory.
To those who believe in 'sandbox': Here're some advices. *Reduce anchor text density of total BLs to around 20 to 25%. You can control it by using different sub-keywords. *Give your new site allins between 30 to 40th position. * The amount of BLs need to be less than the average BLs of all top20 sites. Your site may be found in SERPs within 100th position. I've another experimental group of new (3 months old) sites having search ranking from 20th to 30th. Btw, the search is more than 1 million, and search terms are 2 words.
Hey Linkgangster, Thanks for your post, could you explain each of those points in more detail. Not sure that I understand them properly. Sorry. Cheers!
I don't agree with you on this one. I seriously doubt that dropping the allinanchor rank will improve results. If what you suggest were true, you could set up Googlebombs on your competitors, thus eventually removing them from the results by raising their allinanchor ratings. What happens in my opinion is that if you target a narrow range of anchor text a devaluation kicks in, thus making each subsequent link anchor less valuable. I would also guess that the more different anchor texts you have pointing at you, the greater the threshhold for each one will be before the devaluation kicks in. This would allow big sites to benefit from many links while preventing smaller ones from taking over the SERPs through Googlebombing. Whatever happens, the benefit from each anchor text link must be at least zero or more, it cannot be negative(ie. a penalty).
You've missed one point mentioned by others -- **the age of site.** Most top20 sites are old. Bombing these will most probably improve the ranking. I had tried this to a 8 year old site using coop. The SERPs moved from 34th to 5th. I suspect that the allinanchor devaluation doesn't apply to older sites that are more than 1 year old. On the other hand, I do agree to you. Targeting wide range of anchor text is actually to lower down anchor text density in all BLs, and thus reduce possibility of search result devaluation **to new sites** according to the targeted search term. Hey... we're giving the similar explanation but in different words
True. From what I gather G only applies serious penalties for on-site SEO, whereby the owner can clearly be held accountable for any "dodgy tactics". It would be irrational to apply serious penalties for off-site "black hat work", which could be the work of anyone. The way I see it, G has access to all the relevant info it needs using which any "un-natural" activity can be detected and dealt with. Hence any unusual linking structures or peaks may have their benefit devalued. So which ever way you approach SEO, keep it balanced and legit.
My experience is that if you take care of your content and your keywords the rest is mostly getting backlinks. I worked on my content and keywords to get it as tight and relevant as I could.
Hmm. allinanchor #6 allintitle #4 yet not in top 1000 for a 4 word keyphrase. Btw search results for phrase match exactly allinanchor results with the exclusion of my site. I think this is definetly sandboxed.
Having a good ranking for allintext: allintitle: allinanchor: but not ranking for the phrase is also a sign of a site's serps being degraded by the 302 redirect bug. You should avoid submitting to any directory using redirects rather than indexable text-based anchor links. Try to get your site de-listed if you find you are. I do wonder if the sandbox and the 302 redirect bug are related; if they fix the bug, we'll see. allinurl: can also play a role in ranking, as can intitle:, inanchor:, intext: and inurl:.
Allinurl/inurl is way more valuable than it should be imho. Anyone can buy a domain with a hideous anti-human-readnable name like "www.get-fast-payday-car-mortgage-loans.com" then stuff the directories with keywords. It penalises people who have original/interesting domain names. Ah well... Sandbox-wise, don't think I've experienced it. All my new sites got PR0 in the update which I think is incorrect given my backlinks, but I'm not in a "sandbox" - the ones that aren't overly competitive rank pretty decently.
I kept very good records of dates with my last website. It was almost 3 months to the day until google started counting the first backlinks. I targeted specific keywords in stages, and am now convinced on the three months. It appears that the sandbox uses a rolling 3 month time frame i.e. if you targeted "blue widgets" first, and then "green widgets" two weeks later, google will start to count the "green widgets" backlinks approximately 2 weeks after the "blue widgets." For the first three months, I did not have any keywords (even non-competitive three words) show in the first 1000 results with google, even though some were number 1 with msn and yahoo. I'll also add that the site was fully indexed with google within the first week and had a PR4 after 4 1/2 weeks of launch. It would appear google counted the backlinks for PR purposes, just didn't use them for SERPs.