The most frequently asked question about search engine optimization is What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? Let’s take a quick glance at the details of Google Sandbox Theory and its related issues.
What is the Google Sandbox Theory?
Web designer found that the new websites optimized and having number of inbound links were not ranking well for the selected keywords. It was observed that after being listed in the SERPS for two weeks, pages were either dropped from index or ranked low for the desired keywords.
Websites that were once ranked high in the SERPS positions that went down tremendously in rank allowing lower ranking sites to have priority position on the keywords provided evidence to Search Engine Marketing experts, which helped them to understand what this Sandbox effect was.
Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox effect
The biggest factor to the Google Sandbox effect is Time Delay. This has to do with the age of the site and the effects that were made after the certain period. This is also believed to be an unjust penalty placed on websites.
The job of a search engine is to provide the most useful information to its users. Search engine optimization deals with puzzling algorithms that relate the appropriate content for different search terms.
How to find out if your website is ‘Sandboxed’?
When your website does not appear in any of the SERPS for the desired keywords or if the results are not satisfactory though there are inbound links and proper on-page optimization then the website is definitely Sandboxed.
Search engines will provide most relevant information to their users. SEO develops complex algorithms to infer relevancy of content for various search terms.
The Sandbox restricts the new websites; the effect reduces on the basis of aging of the websites but on the link aging. According to the ‘Allegra’ update websites that were continually being optimized when they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for desired keywords when the Sandbox effect ended.
SEO strategies to minimize your website’s ‘Sandboxed’ time:
- Start promoting the website the moment it is created.
- Follow low-intensity and long-term link building plan.
- Avoid black-hat techniques.
One thing to avoid sandboxing is to buy domain with some aged. You can buy some of them at sitepoint.com or sitedeal.org.
HTH
From my experience, the sites that seem to get sandboxed the most are ones which are obviously spammy and get a massive surge in links within days of being created. I personally find that not adding any advertising for the first month, and building links gradually over time the best way to avoid it. I created two sites, more or less identical but slightly different niches. One I put advertising (adsense) on immediately, the other I left it off. I built the same links for both sites and added the same amount of content, the site with the advertising only started ranking after about a month, the one without was on the first page for a few keywords within the week!
My page rank got docked last quarter. I’m still not sure why. I don’t use “black hat” techniques.
I hope I have some luck next time the adjust the google pr
Can Can I took a look at your site and you do have a lot of outgoing links … perhaps you have more outgoing links than you do internal links and that’s caused a loss of page rank … of course it could also be the sites you are linking too (ie commercial ones). Do you have contests on your site? I heard a while back that Google doesn’t like contest posts (particularly ones created to get backlinks to the site) so that could be another reason why your PR went down too.
When addressing the Google SandBox issue, there are two scenarios that must be taken into consideration, namely:
1. Sandbox affecting both old and new sites. This is caused by two main shady activities: > increasing the back link volume in rapid, short bursts followed by an extended period of time with little to no productivity in this area and > massive content infusion, also with wide inactivity gaps
2. Sandbox affecting new sites. This is due to the lack of trust that Google has in newly launched websites. You can compare it with a probation period; the site is crawled and indexed but it isn’t appointed with any ranking power. Thorough promotion campaign is required.
For both scenarios the best strategy is to build a solid back link portfolio consisting of only quality link sources and follow a tight publishing schedule.
Hope this helps your new site in its early days online.
Cheers,
Cristian