Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox Effect: Tools & Theory
by Fernando Hal (cheatad.com)

What is Google Sandbox?
Google Sandbox theory roughly means that new websites (or websites that have gone through major change recently) will be less likely to be ranked high in Google Search Engine for competitive keywords.

Retrieved from wikipedia

The Sandbox (a.k.a. Sandboxing or the sandbox effect or the Google penalty) is a phenomenon that people have claimed to observe in the ranking of web pages, that is Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking to bring sites to the top, by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own before creating that web site.

Google Sandbox Fact or Myth?
While the wording might not be precise, Google Sandbox effect is very much in place, regardless of whether it is by-design or as side effect of Google’s sophisticated algorithm.

From observations of my websites, I have seen the Google Sandbox effects. The experience that best confirm the existence of Google Sandbox is when in one website, all my page traffic will drop whenever I add new articles loaded with competitive keywords. It will climb up again in few weeks time. Then when the traffic is back to before the post, I post another article with competitive keywords again. I continued this patterns for almost a year, and can safely conclude that Google Sandbox exist. Articles with not-so-competitive keywords don’t produce the same affect, only for articles with competitive keywords. The good news is that everytime the traffic bounces, it grows to even higher then before.

How to check if my website is in Google Sandbox?
Blocked by Google is not the same as being Sandboxed. Websites blocked by Google due to a variety of reason, for example for duplicate contents, paid links, cloaking, etc. These are the pages that Google algorithm loathe on as not worthy.

Google Sandbox, on the other hand can be taken as compliment. Look at it as if Google is a person. It means Google look up on you, on the articles you have written. It means your pages are good, and worthy some place on the search result. However, since you are new, they are not sure that the ranking they have given you is quite accurate. So Google sandbox you, to observe how you progress, as many newer sites come and go. Lots of new sites are also build on copied content. So they take time to ensure that your article is not a stolen content.

First you need to know if your site is indexed. Your page can only be Sandboxed if it is indexed. Search your site name in Google. e.g. site:http://www.cheatad.com. If none of your page is indexed, it can either means that your site is new – thus not indexed yet – or blocked by Google. Either way, you can be sure that it is not being Google Sandboxed

When you confirm that your pages is indeed indexed, choose one unique sentence about 8 words long from your article (or page title more than 5 words long ), copy, and paste it to Google search. e.g. for me I can search How Google Detects AdSense Invalid Clicks. Your site should be right there on the first page, or at least in the top 30 results, else it is possible that your site is in Google Sandbox.

How to avoid Google Sandbox?
You can start small, choosing keywords carefully, writing article which doesn’t have much competition. Gambling, for example is definitely a no-go. So are SEO topics. You can write about not-so-popular topics, example about Kuala Lumpur Football club (but don’t write about Manchester United or FC Bercelona). Post new articles regularly, one article a day. Then slowly, every 20 posts, write one topic with higher popularity. Do this until majority of your webpages are indexed by Google, then continue writing articles, with a slightly more popular keyword with every article. By end of the year, your site would have been quite safe to post articles with competitive keywords. But make sure it stays within it’s niche or closely related niches.

Actually, I don’t really recommend doing this, with one exception. If this is your first website, and you hope to see some results quickly, this is the safest way to go lest you lose interest. But if you have already got some taste of earning money online, and looking forward to serious money, it takes too much time to earn good money this way. The better way is to just ignore the Google Sandbox, write good interesting articles, continue your link building. Your site might falls to the sandbox once in a while, but if you are persistent enough it will climb out from the sandbox and you can be assured the pay-off is worth it.

How to get out from Google Sandbox?
It’s actually the very basic of SEO practices : post good contents and build quality links. Other then that it is really a matter of time. Depending on how competitive are the keywords you are targeting, it may take from mere weeks to 3 years. When choosing your niche and keywords, make a rough guess on how long the Google Sandbox will take, and decide whether you are prepared to wait. The best way, I feel, is creating few websites in similar niche but different level of keyword competitiveness. This way, you can get the best of both world.

Note: If you haven’t get it by now, let me clarify that I am not referring to the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Sandbox. It isn’t something to do with Google Checkout Sandbox either. To be frank, I suspect they may partly be Google’s attempt to believing that Google Sandbox is a myth. If you look at it, there is not even any mention of Sandbox in the Traffic Estimator page, except in the URL.

Check out also these SEO related pages:
Basic SEO Tips
SEO Tools For Firefox
SEO For Bing