Hi I started a magazine site about a couple of months ago. I've got about 70 articles on the site now, yet my google ranking is nowhere. I think that's coz of the sandbox stuff. What I wanted to know, how long does generally google place new sites in the sand box.

Waiting to come out in the open, if that means more traffic (and revenues). BTW, what do you think about google naming this theory as sandbox. I thought a sandbox was supposed to protect, not hide. Google Sandbox falls in the other category. I wonder why...

the "sandbox" is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of an aging period. Google didn't call it a sandbox BTW The normal duration is from 3 to 6 months, but in highly competitive markets up to a year could be possible.

6 months... That seems a lot. Hmmm..., maybe I should be focusing on other ways of promoting the site other than wating for google. I'd been working hard to get links coming in and stuff, but all of it now seems useless. Anyways, thanks for the fact correction. But do you think this "aging period" is required, and does it help?

It was Google's way of combating the link spamming where a website could be "bombed" to the top of the SERPs by launching the site with hundreds or thousands of IBLs. So they made it impossible for that to happen.
As with all major algo changes there is collateral damage, so as usual the few (relatively speaking) who do there best to subvert the rankings, damage the efforts of the few (relatively speaking again) who do things in the best way for visitors and also hurt the many thousands who just build their own sites and have no idea what SEO stands for.

Updates since have targeted various types of link schemes and we may even see a relaxing of this aging delay once Google feel they are back in control of their results once more.

Ok, so this is a measure more or less by google to keep their servers light.

i bought 1 link for my site that was 1 month old and was listed in google the next day

Hi

I defo think there is a sandbox. My site is just under 6 months old and I did not have a listing on google unless it was for really obscure phrases 2 days ago I think my site came out of sandbox as it is now page 6 for a holiday phrase. Is this a sign I am out the sandbox and also if I changes a couple of things on the site it should bump up to page 1?

What do you think?

Regards

Petehols

I think you are out of the sandbox Petehols. So am I, I suppose. Yestereday, I got a listing on page four for a fairly popular search term. I got a listing no. 38 out of some 550 k results. However, my site has still got a PR 0.

A good way of guaging the sandbox is to search for a keyword and note where it comes in the SERPS. Then search again, using allinanchor: before the same keyword and see if the positioning in the results is wildly different. If it is, then this would suggest the sandbox effect is affecting your site.

Hi Padawan

I done the allinamchor: search and my site is appearing as no1 page 1 on that search but when you do a normal search it is now appearing on page 12 does this mean i am still sandboxed or what?

Regards

Petehols

Originally Posted by petehols

Hi Padawan

I done the allinamchor: search and my site is appearing as no1 page 1 on that search but when you do a normal search it is now appearing on page 12 does this mean i am still sandboxed or what?

Regards

Petehols

Yes I think that is fairly conclusive. Allinanchor: is measuring your link popularity for that keyword and doesn't necessarily mean that you would get #1 when you come out the sandbox, but the fact that the results are so different does suggest you are suffering from the sandbox effect.

Hi Padawan

Thanks for that is there any idea when the site will be let out of the sandbox it is now been up and running for just over 6 months?

Regards

Petehols

I've heard that the sandbox can last 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, or even longer - that's people's opinions and varies, depending on how competitive the keywords are. I guess no-one but Google really knows the answer though.

to come out of the sandbox faster build up your back links so you have some good weight pointing to your website which will help give your website the extra push it needs because when you have your link on lets say a website that gets visited by a spider and cached every day when the spider comes crawling the site it will follow the links on the page

Don't focus only on google there are a lot of search engines like MSN, Yahoo and a lot more.

Hi

I am not concentrating only on google. MSN, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Wanadoo etc all have me page 1 pos 1 so all the other search engines are picking me up and listing me fine it is only google that i am having the problem with.

Petehols

Well, you just cannot ignore Google if you are focussing on SEs to be your major source of visitors. Anyways, I've found that my site came "out" of the sandbox almost immidiately after I started using adsense on some of the pages. I'm not sure if google has something to do with it, maybe it's a coincidence, but if your planning to raise revenues from advertisers, maybe a few pages could use adsense.

Besides, I feel that more popular is the subject, more time it takes for getting out of the sandbox.