61 replies to this topic

[Michael]

Dear ghergich,

thank you for bringing your opinion to the forum.

If it is agreeable, I encourage you to post links to other resources where those of us who are experiencing problems can go and learn more if we choose to.

Thanks,

- Michael

[ghergich]

A lot of sites are time sensitive, what about a site about the Olymics, and new restaurant, a hot new christmas toy, etc. Not all of the web is good to be stale. Stale results are bad for the user there is no way around it. You get in the sandbox if you get a few links are a lot of links it does not matter if the term is competitive. Look into some of those other forums you suggested since they are researching it and you will see people posting similat stories over and over. A better topic would be "has anyone gotten out or into the sandbox" and we can research the how and why they got in and got those that got. IF any have.

Edited by searchrank, 14 October 2004 - 02:51 PM.

[SearchRank]

...no need to be mad at each other about it ...

Ghergich,

I don't think anyone is getting mad but you.

I hear about the Sandbox Theory all the time but to tell you the truth, I do not care much about it and as such have not conducted much research on it. I haven't been affected by it yet and we are always launching and doing SEO for new sites. If the site is new, I already inform the customer that it will take some time before they see results. I have been doing that since I started in the business back in 97, long before any Sandbox theories started circulating. I guess if I ever run into a problem with it, then I will conduct some research but until then, I just do not have time to research every theory that comes along.

As for being upset that you are not able to find the answers you are looking for related to "Sandboxing" all I have to say is that the people that offer advice and try to help people here with problems do so freely. In other words they are taking valuable time that they could be working on projects that pay them a living and donating here, myself included. Therefore I can see you being upset if you were paying someone to provide research on the Sandbox theory and they didn't provide the advice you were looking for but let me ask you, have you paid anything yet for any advice you have received here? If not, then there really is no reason to complain.

[Jill]

The thing is, we've already been back and forth on this in that other long thread.

I am of the opinion that for competitive phrases, a new site does not deserve to be ranked highly.

If Google stops this through a "sandbox" or through something else, I don't really know, and I don't really care. I'm just glad that they stop it because it's smart and better for their results overall.

A new site can never suddenly spring up and be a real true authority on a subject. If one does, it should be heavily scrutinized because real life just doesn't work that way.

I think it's great that Google has figured out a way to make sure that people can't spam their way to the top as a fake authority site. This is a GOOD thing for all of us, not a bad thing. It means that the real, true sites, the ones that people work hard on, and the ones that are true authorities will win in the end.

Let me end this by saying that I don't think that is the problem that many in this thread are having. If you haven't attempted to build a get-rich-quick authority site in a matter of months, then this doesn't apply to you.

You would fall under the Florida/Gladys update phenomenon. That one is what I believe to be Google's attempt to make informational sites show up well before commercial sites in order to better monetize their search engine.

This is a different issue than sandbox and my posts here are simply to clarify that. If you want to discuss an issue, then you should be knowing what your discussing and not get mad when it is clarified by others.

I do believe in the sandbox, and I LIKE it.

I'm not too thrilled with Gladys though, and that's where Michael and the others are having problems.

[ghergich]

Again all i was saying that there was no need to talk about the sandbox on the forum becuase the mods have not taken the time to research it. Jill seemed to question this but now we have another mod saying they did not research it. This is your right of course and I am not looking for free advice on the sandbox from this forum because by your own admission you have none to offer.

You say this is not affecting many here and what would make you think that. Everyone is affected that is making a new site. That is why so many forums are posting about it. Why are we the extreme minority where our mods cant even weigh in because they have done no research on a major issue that affects all new sites. This again is not personal I am just going off of what you all are saying.

[powerofeyes]

Yup it may well be googles search engine but we are the people who dedicate our lives to providing content for them to include. Now I am not overly concerned about my sites being sandboxed as i will get them out eventually but i do think that it is totaly wrong to leave webmasters dangling with no explanation as to what is going on. On top of that i think that it is rude and insulting for some people on this forum to treat everyone else like blittering idiots and to pretent that they are the great experts when they know nothing about sandbox theory and continualy assert that it does not exist and that it is the dumn webmaster who hasnt made their site worthy of highrankings. Then they say that page rank doesnt matter when it is clear to any webmaster from observation that it is very very important. On top of that since the Pr update the serps have become very messy with some very strange results and no one here seems to have noticed. I would like to suggest that the so called experts find out what is going on here and treat the visitors to this forum with more respect and stop treating people like idiots. I would also suggest that people stop making excuses for google and use their authority to pursuade them to raise their game. We are talking about real peoples lives and i for one think webmasters deserve a lot, lot better.

LOL Dinis, I burst out laughing reading your post, Can you just post your observation here about sandboxing/laging period of new sites,

Can you give me some examples of what you have found,

Can you tell me what affects new sites from not ranking,

Can you give me an example of the which links are sandboxed,

can you give me explanation whether a new site only or even an existing site with sudden boost in backlinks getting affected,

Can you explain technically what kind of link/spam filter will trigger sandboxing of sites on algorithm part of view,

Can you give me explaination referring some research papers on this type of algorithm,

Can you explain to me how the search engines used to work before,

Can you tell me how long it used to take for any site to rank before a year,

Can you tell me how many Niche competitive phrases you have worked on where you have seen excessing lagging of new sites,

Are you a Search Engine Optimizer or Site owner?

Can you give me any way to boycott this sandboxing of site,

Can you tell me what works in new sites now

Can you provide me some reference where some one has actually proved this lagging period for new sites ever exist, ( Ofcourse there are some experiences and wild speculations can you give examples where some one has proved technically what might me happening, This forum is not about wild guesses and canocial speculations, We people have the mission not to missguide any webmaster from making the site best it can be, Most of the Mods and experts in this forum believe in building great sites that are worthy for visitors with search engines as a secondary priority)


You call Pagerank as the most important thing, That is the word of a guy who is not aware of what is happening or what works in google, Pagerank is ofcourse is the foundation of google but then again pagerank is only the measure of the quality of incoming links,

Just to know how much you are aware of Pagerank can you give me a small technically explanation where Pagerank can be applied to an algorithm, Can you give me a small explanation where Pagerank can be heavily manipulated,

Can you give me an example where you see pagerank is the most important part,

You say you saw lots of movement and bad results after Toolbar Pagerank update, Do you mean that, pagerank update in toolbar comes live atleast 10 to 20 days after the Pagerank is internally calculated and reflected in the SERPs, But you say you saw lots of movement, So it simply means you are not aware of the working on google,

Nobody is treated in this forum as an idiot, We just dont want anyone to take the wrong path, This forum is much more than a simple SEO forum, The focus and mission of this forum is to make webmasters and site owners build great working sites so that search engines will reward them naturally,

And the fact you dont deserve anything from a search engine, Search Engines are meant for people to find relevant information, They are not meant for webmasters/site owners to rank their sites and manipulate the natural algorithm of search engines,

[ghergich]

It is quite possible that Florida/Gladys was the start of the sandbox....but anyhow if you guys dont want to discuss or think its necessary to research the sanbox effect why not make a sticky say that the mods in this forum have not researched the sandbox theory and say why? Then list some links to forums who discuss it which would prob. be evey other seo forum. If you like I would even make a list so we dont have to get testy about it. The sticky would be a good place to point the questions to since the forum does not whish to really get into this, we just go around and around and dont have any substance on this issue, now that the mods have admitted to not researching it, this becomes clearer to me. That and I am a hardhead who is "thick as brick" to quote Tull.

[ghergich]

powerofeyes - lol be careful not to get personal - or is that just me.
If the mods will PM me ill post some good looooooog threads about this that are really great but like I said we should sticky them unless we really want to have an all out debate on it.....I would love to and have it structured like this.

Step one - is there a sadbox - both sides post evidence and urls and all

step 2 - if ther is has anyone gotten out - ppl post evidence

step 3 - what triggered the sandbox effect.

[OldWelshGuy]

ghergich who said no one was researching the sandbox effect? I just said I was not interested in taking part in group research I am snowed under with work, and what little I have measured I have posted.

I have made it clear that I subscribe to the sandbox existing in some shape or form. I would say though that half if not more of people who claim to be sandboxed are taking the easy way out, when their sites simply are not up to the mark. I also admit to looking at sites and thinking 'why the hell is this site not ranking'?

One thing I will say though is that we can only really carry out effective research on site over which we have had 100% of the control for 100% of the time. Many clients keep no records of where they have requested links, no record of links they have had on their pages and removed for non reciprocation etc. How then can we have 100% accurate research with no 'control' in the scientific sense?

I have a client that I took on in March, The site very little before that in fact it bumbed around for two years never being completed and had about 5,000 visitors during that time.

I rebuilt the site from the ground up new page names the lot, so nothing remained of the old site. This site ranks #1 for many phrases and brings home the bacon. However, for one particular 2 word phrase, it ranks 3 on MSn, 4 on yahoo! in a serp of 18 million, the term is fairly competitive. On Google it comes into the top ten, hangs around for a week or two, then flies back out of the top 1,000. This is happening cyclically for between 10 days and 14 days. 2 weeks in 2 weeks out. I can't explain it, I can only check the Google data everytime it happens. To date I can see nothing openly happening. All known links from the other search enine known link pages are checked the day it pops out, and they are all showing a cache.

Put bluntly, I can not find a cause for something that has a pattern. I will keep looking, but I fear I will not find it. My personal opinion on the sandbox, is that like the Google algo in general, it is not tripped by any one factor. I firmly believe that it is tripped by a combination of factors that can be used to trip the filter. less of one more of the other is going to trip it as much as the opposite. But I do not have the time to launch a combination of sites and test it. If however this becomes a problem then i will have no option but to do it.

[powerofeyes]

To Gherich,

I Did see you argue back and forth in Sandbox thread and some other threads, I can understand you want to discuss sandboxing of a new site extensively, We appreciate your idea, But this forum and its moderators dont usually discuss specific theories and algorithms,

Our mission is to make a great site for visitors and impress search engines, Not build a site for search engines with users as a secondary priority,

Which ever forum you go the real experts who are more experienced in the industry wont argue for silly theories, it is because they have seen these things all the time and discussing important matters than simply issues wont matter,

i visit most of the forums and I dont see a really quality expert argue about sandboxing of new sites, ofcourse experts give their opinion but they never discuss this extensively because it is not a priority,

Nobody in this forum including mods would have said sandboxing never existed, but they say dont worry about it, So is sandboxing wrong ofcourse not, If you look back on how the web worked before new sites usually take 2 to 3 months to show up in rankings, Now it takes a bit more around 4 months, Google with billion of pages in their index and 1000s of SE spammers around should come out with a iron handed solution, And sandboxing of sites taking part in extensive link manipulation is a great solution,

A search engine can survive in this touch industry only when they stand up to the bad spamming happening out there, Google a search engine which relies heavily on the link structure of the web have to have strong link filters and that is what we are seeing too,

Have tried getting links for an existing site for a competitive keyword phrase from 100s of sites, have you seen the effect, Did you see any link filter there, Ofcourse i see some sort of link spam filter kicking in there, So is it sandboxing,

Have to tried adding links naturally for a site apart from the network of sites you know or own, Does sandboxing exist there, According to me lagging period for some phrases are just because of strong link spam filters google uses now, We have tested it extensively, I am not interested in discussing it, All I would say is build a site as natural as possible and ranking will definetely happen,

Google has one of the toughest algorithm today, Just because people cant crack that algorithm they found a new way of blamming google( sandboxing), Like the guy in this pointed out, He says his site has 20 links and he wants to rank, He also says his competitors have the same number of links, So how did he find that, With 100s of PHD researchers working on a algorithm everyday, Do you think google will be as each to crack as anyone imagines not at all, From what I see google uses some really tough criterias for ranking and finding it and ranking is one heck of a process,

Best way to win is to build a great information/commercial site and build lots of links and do what google likes to do,

[powerofeyes]

If the mods will PM me ill post some good looooooog threads

Ofcourse i read all active threads in this forum and I know what you have posted in those threads, I am not getting personal with anyone my simple answer is even if people are aware how to win google's algorithm no one will be willing to share it since it is not standard SEO stuff anymore,

And if you need reference URLs to all sandbox threads in various forums i can PM you some 100 URLs, I read all of them and most of them never made any real sense to me,

[ghergich]

i can post over and over where people with natural link getting a few links at a time are finding the same issue. Old Guy lol does not use spamy link getting and he sees it to. IT happens no matter how you auquire the links. And what are you talking about building for users not search engines. The sandobx has nothing to do with that. IT hits eveyone the same, spammer and those who dont even optimize.
Now it takes a bit more around 4 months - I see people consitantly posting about 6 to 9 months. Have you personally gotten out in 4, how did you do this or did you just pop out one day. Do you move in and out like the above post? How competitive is the Phrase? I dont think anyone of you who think the sandbox is good news here me when I talk about stale results. What is your comeback for that? How are stale results good? How is that good for the user? and if it is a spam filter (which i doubt) then it sucks because it just give you 6 month old spam or whatever month you come out of the box at. Please can any of you answer that question?

[powerofeyes]

I dont like to comment on google results, I am more of a technical guy and i know the pain all those PHDs take to get the best results to the end users,

Infact i feel I am not eligible to comment on google's results, As a end user i get what ever i want to find in google, So let us leave it alone,

Have you personally gotten out in 4

Yes i got sites out of sandbox in around 3 months, Quality links comes out of any spam filter faster, Artificial links(buying links) takes more time to come out of the link lagging,

We are a Typical SEO company who have worked on some of the most competitive industry keywords, we ranked some and we failed to rank some but recent days we perform very well due to some techniques which we found which works both in google and yahoo, But the lag time does exist, In the lag time we just keep building links and finally the site is out of sandbox and ranks fine,

Infact we are seeing this link filter affecting existing sites too, So I feel this is not only about new sites but for existing sites too, All sites with sudden boost in backlinks with competitive anchor text goes through a link spam filter these days in my opinion, if you are interested in testing it try pointing 100s of different site links to a site with competitive keyword phrase in anchor text, i bet that site will not rank for that phrase for atleast 2 months for that phrase, it is because of the heavy link spam filter implemented in google's algorithm,

How is that good for the user?

Ofcourse it is not great for end users, but it is good for their search results, Why does google care about that, There are already billions of pages in their index and if they provide relevant results from those billions of pages it is more than sufficient, IMO there is never a need for a new site to rank immediately even though it has great information because of all those billions of pages,

Link filter is the best way to fight spam algorithmically, if you run a search engine you will know the pain, Try taking some time and think on search engine point of view, According to you google is evil and want people to buy adwords, what is wrong with that, it is their search engine they found a search engine to make money not as a social service, if you dont like google's results switch search engine, if end users dont like google they will make a switch, I dont like blamming google on an SEO point of view because I am not eligible for it,

if it is a spam filter (which i doubt) then it sucks

So be it, I recommend you switch search engines probably yahoo which I feel dont have these type of spam filters,

6 month old spam

Ofcourse not, There are pages in existing sites which rank immediately, Infact some posts in my blog ranks as soon as the crawled page appears in the index, so still people are seeing fresh information,

[torka]

Gherich,

What exactly do you think anybody here can do about the sandbox?

Do you think that carrying on here and elsewhere about it is going to change things somehow? Do you think that somebody here has some influence with Google and can get it "fixed"?

For all we know, the sandbox is functioning exactly as the people at the Googleplex planned. Or maybe they think it's a total pig's breakfast. We don't know, and either way it doesn't matter.

That's the point that person after person here has tried to make to you, and the point that you seem determined not to "get". It isn't that we don't believe the sandbox exists. It isn't that we lack the brainpower to figure it out.

We JUST DON'T CARE, because whether or not it exists and what form it takes has absolutely NO BEARING on how we go about optimizing a site. Google isn't the only fish in the sea, and no prudent SEO would advise people to build their entire business plan on organic results in one SE.

The sandbox and every other aspect of every SE algo are just part of the landscape. Everyone has to work within the limitations of his or her chosen field. I'm sure astronauts would find it much easier to work in space if they didn't have to breathe air, but barring some genetic alterations, that's a limitation they're stuck with. Just so, we are stuck with the limitations of the various SE algorhythms and all we can do is work within those limitations as best we can. We here on this forum and on all the other SEO forums have about as much chance of changing Google's algo as the astronauts do of altering their genetic makeup. Maybe less.

On some forums, they've taken the tack of trying to figure out every minute detail of all the different SE algos. I think they're wasting their time, personally, but I do have to admire their energy, enthusiasm for the task and attention to detail.

Instead, many folks here have chosen to simply work on making sites the best they can be, taking the long-term view. If you're working on a long-term plan, a sandbox of six months -- and one which only applies to one SE -- is nothing to get excited over. It only means something to people who are trying to "get rich quick" or jump on the latest bandwagon before it's "too late" and who haven't gotten over their Google-centrism.

Now, if you want to do some detailed, scientifically valid research to identify exactly what factor(s) cause the sandbox to kick in, and how to get out of it as quickly as possible, have at it. And when you're done, feel free to keep that research to yourself or share it freely however you see fit. Because I'm willing to bet that by the time you get the research done and have reached your conclusions, the algo will have changed again and you'll have to start all over.

That's the nature of algo-chasing.

And here's a free bonus hint: here in the southern US, we have a saying: "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

If your goal is to induce more-experienced people here to do that sort of time-consuming, detailed research for you, and then post their results here for you to use for free, one way to insure that does NOT happen is by insulting and berating the mods and all the folks on this forum who have decided to step off the algo-chasing treadmill.

So, we're not as worked up over the sandbox as you are. Pardon me for being blunt (as a Southern Belle, it isn't in my nature), but that's YOUR problem, not OURS.

--Torka

[Jill]

Vijay thanks for summing that up very nicely! If even Vijay, a programmer who likes to figure out algos thinks is pretty much a waste of time to get worked up over this sandbox thing, then that says quite a lot.

Torka has also hit the nail on the head regarding most of the moderator's feelings about this.