A lot of people don’t know what the sandbox is or when they’ve been sandboxed. Well a phsycologist would say the sandbox is a soul crushing creation by google ment to discourage spam sites and having the side effect of making a lot of web entrpruners go bald.
The google sandbox is really a penalty a site gets when it’s doing TOO well (getting too much search traffic), and it is a new site. This is a major reason why Vic @ blogger unleashed heavily recomends buying pre-owned domains. What I’ve generally expiranced is that your site will hit around 200 search visits a day then get dinged down to 40-50. The sandbox MAY only affect competitive niches. The sandbox MAY only affect sites that build up links “strangley” quickly. The truth is no one knows for sure but these are a couple of theories. I had a site about the upcoming election that was getting well in excess of 1000 search visits a day and it never got sandboxed, it had a TON of crappy links.
Grizz is planning on doing some expiramenting with the sandbox which God willing will be very benifical. He talks about it in his post about flipping pre owned domains.
Anyway the real point of this post was to SHOW people what it looks like to be relegated to the sandbox. A picture says 1000 words so here it is:
The sandbox is a couple things for sure 1) it’s painful 2) it’s real. Other than that not a lot is known for sure.
34 comments ↓
Just testing out my newly installed KeywordLuv plugin
Justins last blog post..The Google Sandbox
The graph looks strangely familiar.
Top Rated Digitals last blog post..Digital SLR Cameras You’ll Never Be Able To Afford
Thanks for clearing image about sand box, and for this piece of Your web stats where we can see sandbox in real light
Making Money From Homes last blog post..Make Money with recession "partner"
So why is Google penalizing you for having large traffic for a new site? Do they see this as unnatural?
I have only seen the sandbox effect me on one occasion and I wasnt wearing my white hat
Very useful stuff here. I am researching content for an article. Bookmarked, will be back.
Benjamins last blog post..Website Traffic That Makes You Money
It’s weird i think my sites homepage only got sandboxed I changed my sites IP address and then bam my homepage is no where to be found, but all my internal pages are still ranked, really weird and annoying.
I don’t know why would Google would sandbox a highly traffic website or blog that’s really strange!
John, It is just for new sites with poor content and a lot of traffic. Every unusual thing can put your site in Sandbox so beware of that.
Mikes last blog post..News
Great Content to understand what is “Sandbox”
Hi,
Thank you very much actually I was looking for about Google sandbox.
I have had a new site with lots of content and links stuck in the Google Sandbox for exactly 16 months now. For its main target niche I’m comfortably on the first page of MSN and Yahoo. But in the Google SERPS’ I’m nowhere to be found.
My choices are to either rewrite content or to try to build up another 1000 links. Neither one is a guarantee to success.
Every time I create new blog. Once I post them, they indexed. 2-3 day later after being index, most of them gone. Around 1 week – 8 week (up to blog) they come back. Is this call sandbox?
i think sandbox had more to do with trust rank. Once you obtain enough link and thus trust, google will lift you out of sandbox.
I was just wondering if you could please clear something up for me. I understand the principle and the practicality of the sandbox and the damage it can do all too well, but I never noticed my PR drop. Surely your PR should be linked to your visits?
Ah Google, you have to love them!
It will be interesting to see how your website (or homepage) re-emerges from the sandbox… be sure to share your experience of when it happens and what changes you made to help it happen.
Karl
I think one of my websites was sandboxed this morning, My search engine traffic has completly dropped. [Don't know what to do!!!!!]
Just a couple of things – how long has the domain been up and running before it got relegated? Do you have any clue what caused it in this particular case?
And finally – have you been released yet? I’ve heard a ton of advice – ranging from “don’t do anything, just wait” to “remove links” to “keep linkbuilding’.. it’s a bit confusing.
Thanks for clearing concept about Google sendbox. Google sendbox is really help website oweners to protect against spam sites. The Google Sandbox is an alleged filter placed on new websites. The result is that a site does not receive good rankings for its most important keywords and keyword phrases. Even with good content, abundant incoming links and strong Google PageRank, a site is still adversely affected by the Sandbox effect.
I can see your getting the odd spam comment because your using keywordluv. I feel your pain mate…using Bad Behavior and Akismet at least kills off the obvious spammers :p
The way i see it is build links slowly and give the google fools what they want fresh unique content with great links and cloak them links.
So how old does a site need to be to avoid the sandbox? My site is just 6 months old and I am starting to build up my links and would like to avoid the sandbox if possible. I still have very low traffic right now but I am moving in the right direction. Any advice on avoiding the sandbox?
How many organic searches does it take to before you get flagged? 200/day, 1000/day? In reading your post, it sounds like the best solution is to build links slowly. But where’s the fun in that?
Google sandbox just sucks, i just let a site build up slow for at least 3 months adding liinks every few days, 1 to 2 links also writing unique content helps and feed that in slow, build to quick and their you go sandbox.
I tried to post this comment but I don’t think it went through. Please delete this if my first comment did go through and this is now a duplicate.
I am not sure if I have experienced the sandbox or not. My home page was ranking pretty well for a specific keyword. I was doing some backlinking but everything above board as far as I know. Then all of the sudden a few days ago I am not even ranking in the top 1000 when I was in the top 100. All of my other keywords are still ranking, although they have lost a little ground. I guess I am just supposed to keep working and keep an eye out to see if it comes back up right?
Google sandbox site is very nice.The Google sandbox is generally related to new websites less then a year old. It’s only part of many factors that makes-up Google’s algorithm in determining a website’s search engine ranking.
I’m determining if my site has been on sandbox is that it disappear on its SERP and I can’t find it. Thanks for sharing a knowledge about sandbox now I know what are the reason for being on sandbox.
I’ve experienced the sandbox on numerous sites and it’s not a pleasant experience, especially when you know the traffic would be there if you still had your rightful place in the search engine rankings. Buying pre-owned domains is a great idea but for new domains I just take it really slowly for the first few months and then gradually build links form there.
Has there been any success stories or studies on how to get out of the so called “Sandbox”?
Seems like the way to avoid it would be to slowly build up traffic instead of going from 0 to 1000 in a few days.
Hi,
Thank you very much for the article. Actually I was looking about Google sandbox and found your article helpful. Thanks once again.
Google Sandbox Algorithm is seemingly a mythical algorithm that discourages new sites from ranking on Google’s SERP on its main keywords eventhough the site’s SEO Web Design is quite well. This ghost algorithm greatly affects sites of less than one year old. The term can be attributed to a sand of sites queuing to fall on a sandbox. Apparently, older sites will have higher priority to rank well on target keywords compared to older ones.
Very useful article. We have to be very careful while improving our new site rank or otherwise Google will destroy everything.
once you get in sandbox it’s extremely difficult to get any PageRank and i heard from my friend once you get in sandbox there’s no wayout. really scary
Informative post. That’s the reason why I prefer to gain my traffic slowly. Do you know how long Google will release a site from their Sandbox?
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