61 replies to this topic

[greenlightsuk]

Good to see a PR update at last but alas no change in the SERPs for one of our sites. The site is now around 6 months old, so I was expecting it to be out of the sandbox by now. But it's still in there

I've checked against loads of phrases and done all the inanchors, intitles, etc, so I'm 100% convined it's still in the sandbox.

But the majority of people seem to think sandbox lasts for 3 or 4 months max, so this got me thinking. The site went live 6 months ago, but we did a 301 redirect to a new domain about 3 months ago. So, was the sandbox timer re-started again from there ?

Anyone had any similar experiences ?

[Diniz]

Sounds like that could be your answer. I gather that it would be treated as a new site on the new domain. Have you got links pointing to the new domain? Are they of similar quantity and quality to sites competing for your terms? Is your text and title optomised with suitable meta derscription containing keyphrase?

[Jill]

Did you get a ton of links in a short period of time?

What makes you think you're in the sandbox as opposed to simply needed to optimize "better"?

[greenlightsuk]

I've got around 20 links pointing to the site from niche directories, industry related sites, reciprocals and one-ways. At least half of the inbound links use good anchor text to link to the site (with variations on the phrase), and some to internal pages, not just the homepage.

The site is optimised well enough for me (Titles, meta descrips, keyword density, variations of phrase, H1s, and internal anchor text) and better optimised than the sites at the top of the SERPs for my target phrases. Also has better (and mostly more) inbound links than those top ranking sites.

I got most of the inbounds in a 3-4 week period.

[Jill]

From what I understand about sandboxing (and I don't understand a whole bunch of it!) it only affects sites that have received hundreds if not thousands of links in a short period of time. I don't think getting 20 links would put you in the sandbox.

You might want to look at other reasons for your site not doing so well.

[greenlightsuk]

I thought about that originally Jill, but I have another couple of sites which are about 3 or 4 months old, and they're also nowhere to be seen in the Google SERPs. They're optimised as well as the other site, and as well as most sites I've ever done. I'm not claiming to be all powerful at optimisation, but I have been doing it for nearly 7 years, and I've never seen anything like this before. Call it sandbox or whatever (March filter), but Google is definitely doing something to hold these sites back.

But I am still optimistic that the sites will rank soon. In the meantime, I'm continuing with the link campaign. Just got another keyword rich anchor based reciprocal 10 minutes ago

[powerofeyes]

From what i can see greenlight your site seem to lack a lot of links, Today google likes lots and lots of links, A few links wont help much,

I rarely doubt your site is in the lag period, if you are going for competitive phrases build a fee hundred unique site links and see what how your ranking improves,

[Diniz]

greenlightsuk just keep adding content and links and be patient. Thats what i am doing. Like you i am sure there is a 'sandbox' and i am seeing literally dozens of other sites suffering as well as the 5 i launched last month. Some sites are competing with me and have recips all over the shop and yet appear no where in the serps. Follow the good advise being offered here. Build for the long term. Get hot industry links, links from sites in similar themes and work on getting press releases and 1 way links by submitting articles. Then again im sure you are probably already doing these things;)
powerofeyes google does value just a few highj quality links a great deal. I should know. I was overtaken by some big buck company who managed to get links in articles in the times, independent, and guardian (top brit papers) and overtook my 450 links (that aren't quite as good).

[Michael]

patience wearing thin over here...I have the same complaint for a site that is now over 9 months released and still getting sand box treatment on google while msn and yahoo rank it more "accurately". This is a killer because the overwhelming majority of the market for this site is google based tech savvy folk.

It would be great to know why google is handicapping some sites...

[Jill]

Are you guys only concentrating on a few keyword phrases?

If so, you might do some research to find the hundreds of related phrases you could also be focusing on.

Google is a tough nut to crack these days. It's not sandboxing just because you're not ranking where you want to be! You need to branch out...

[projectphp]

The site went live 6 months ago, but we did a 301 redirect to a new domain about 3 months ago. So, was the sandbox timer re-started again from there ?

A site is a domain name AFA search engines are concerned. If the domain name changes, it is a new site, even with identical content and structure. Pick a domain and stick to it.

patience wearing thin over here...I have the same complaint for a site that is now over 9 months released and still getting sand box treatment on google while msn and yahoo rank it more "accurately"

No offence, but the Sanbox's popularity is based, in part, on the easiness at which it can be blamed.

You say have a nine month old site, but are you 100% sure it is sandboxed? How do you know? Have you tried many SEO changes and nothing works? What changes do you propose making, and what have you made? Is this a competetive industry? Do you get a lot of traffic from Yahoo and MSN, or is it just good rankings for rubbish terms?

It seems to me, and I am not saying this is true in this instance, that many people blame the sandbox first, and look for other causes last. No one should be hasty in blaming the Sanbox, and even if it is real, then there are still ways to promote your business online while you wait for SEO to kick in. Patience has always been a virtue, and on Google now, probably more so than ever before.

So, stop worrying about some silly sandbox, and look to make some productive changes.

Some ideas:
- Do traditional offline advertising aimed at your niche targetting online sales / enquiries, e.g. "Visit our site for XYZ special offers".
- Form partnmerships with related but non-competing businesses.
- Try a PPC campaign, and see what works and what doesn't, and feed that back into your SEO work.
- Promote, Brand Build, Create Awareness. If you have a tech savvy product, get out where tech savy people congregate, online or off, and become a known presence. Pull crazy stunts to get some free publicity. Write articles, network, get seen, offer comments in the press. This will, in time, lead to more links and improved SEO results, and in the meantime will help you wheather the storm.

Now don't get me wrong, SEO is great, but far too many people worry about SEO specific issues rather than looking to build their business through the best use of their time and resources. Remember: rankings and SEO aren't the goal, they are a tool designed to help you achieve your goals.

Edited by projectphp, 13 October 2004 - 11:26 PM.

[maleman]

hey guys,

You folks who are claiming sandbox:

If you do a site:mydomain.com or a allinurl:mydomain.com search in Google, what is the result of the search?

This will show you the pages that Google has cached from your domain.

Do you only see your homepage?

Do you get an error or "sorry not found"?

If you have pages that aren't cached, I doubt seriously that you're going to see any returns from any keywords on your uncached pages.

Edited by maleman, 13 October 2004 - 11:06 PM.

[powerofeyes]

maleman What are you trying to say????

[le_ffrench]

I too, have had problems to rank in Google with recent websites. The other problem I had was to find methods to determine if they are being kept in the sandbox (or penalized in some way).

Here are the ones I use:
- The websites have a number of backlinks that should enable them to rank on the test queries.
- They have most of their pages indexed and in cache. Title and snippets appear normally (no url-only listing or supplemental results)
- Google indexes pages of the domain regularly. (I check it using daterange queries)
- The websites have a 4+ PR (which in most cases only appeared recently)
- The websites rank well on some allintitle: and allinanchor: queries, but very badly on regular queries
- They do not rank on their own name, even if it is the most used expression in their backlinks
- They do not rank on very specific queries, with very little competition

On one particular case, an allintitle:"expression" query made me realize that one of the pages I surveyed was the only one indexed in google to have the exact expression (two words, one of them being the company name) in its title. Yet the page ranked 76th on the query the last time I checked.

What exact methods do you use to determine your website is being sandboxed?

[Diniz]

I think its bit strange that people who havent launched a new site for years feel like they can dismiss this sandbox theory when it is very clear to people who have launched sites that their site is being held down for no apparent reason.

I can compare results using allintitle: and allinanchor: searches with my new sites and my old ones. The old ones appear in the top ten for the these searches and the normal searches where as my new sites appear between 160 and 200 for a normal search and in the top ten for an allintitle: or allinanchor: search.