Escaping the Sandbox
30 November 2006I previously have made several posts here and here about the phenomenon called the “Google Sandbox” - something that many people who launch brand new websites see. In essence, Google blocks new sites from getting any visitors through its search engine until enough various elements of the site show that it can be trusted. A lot of people have a lot of various theories on it, but one of mine is that there is a flat, 90-day “holding cell” period for a new site, after which you can be released to start ranking on commerce related searches targeted by spammers. When I last posted on it in October, I made this prediction:
I think that these filters applied by Google are lifted in 30 day increments. So if you do something to trip a filter, it gets removed after some period of time has passed. I’ve noticed on many sites that this clocks in at exactly the three month mark, or 90 days. My prediction is that by the end of November, this site will have a sudden jump in traffic as the Sandbox, or part of it, gets lifted. It was founded in late July - meaning 90 days after that is late October. But I’m also factoring in the time it took for Google to find the site and the fact that in my experience, it can take a few weeks for Google to reflect the freshest information. Maybe I’ll be wrong - but if it happens, for me it’s pretty good evidence of the Sandbox.
It’s the end of November, so was I right? I think so - generally the site had been getting about 30 Google searches per day, give or take 10 or so. But since Sunday, November 26th, it’s been averaging around 100. Lots of things can cause traffic jumps - but the better indicator is what I also posted about previously, the search phrases that where unique to this site and yet completely unranked. In my last post I pointed to this search, where this site couldn’t be found in the top 200 results - even though it was the only web site on the Internet to use that phrase. As of today, the search showed Free the Drones ranking #1 for that term - exactly where it makes sense for it to be. I also posted this guess from my past experience about what words actually trigger the sandbox, because it is clear that it does not apply to every search phrase:
My guess is that it’s the word “forums” that triggered the filter - something about it is considered competitive or commercial, and the site wasn’t allowed to rank for it because it was new and “untrusted.”
I’m even more sure of it now, because starting on Sunday, the forum part of this site started getting searches for various phrases such as “financial forums” - that it had never gotten before since the site was started.
What does all this mean for people who run websites for their businesses? It means you need to start your website about 4 months in advance from when you want to people to be using it, for one. If you want your site to get searches right of the bat, you’re better off putting something up on an older site - starting a new one will have that 4 month delay. I also think a lot of people have an incorrect view about what they need to do to get their blog or site ranked in Google. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that it took them six months to a year to get out of the “Sandbox” - and I think if you’re still not ranked at that point and think you’re going to just wait it out, you are wasting your time. Something else is at work - there are a lot of other penalties that can apply to your site regardless of its age, and you might have to make more fundamental changes to the site if you still have ranking problems after the “90 day probation + crawl/update time” period. If you don’t see the same jump I did four months or so after starting your site - I think Google is lowering your rank for reasons other than the Sandbox. Getting better links, fixing duplicate content, and getting rid of any violations of the Webmaster Guidelines are what you should focus on.
Discuss this on the Free the Drones Forums.
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