Sandboxing? [Archive] - Search Engine Watch Forums

olyzhan

10-17-2004, 12:50 PM

I don't believe in the sandboxing theory. I launched a website two months ago with just 5 pages. Over time, I have managed to include about 100 pages (roughly two pages a day). Thus far, google has indexed 94 of them and some pages started showing backlinks today. I do well for two or three keywords (not very attractive keywords) appearing on the first or second Google results page.

So, how does sandboxing hold? I read a great deal about sandboxing before launching my site. Check your site to make sure all files are well linked and that there's quality information on the pages.

Marcia

10-17-2004, 03:23 PM

Gem, did the pages go to URL only listings with no title or description before they slipped out?

You might want to check and see if you're running into a situation with dups - some of the pages look very close to being identical with others.

sugarrae

10-17-2004, 05:12 PM

"Thus far, google has indexed 94 of them and some pages started showing backlinks today. I do well for two or three keywords (not very attractive keywords) appearing on the first or second Google results page."

The sandbox was never about getting indexed. Pages are getting indexed just fine. And people can rank on "not very attractive keywords" as well. It is the competitive keywords that the sandbox prevents sites from ranking in.

"google had over 900 pages cached after 2 months, now down to 30 or so pages"

I agree with Marcia - I think Google is disliking something about your site. Losing a huge amount of indexed pages isn't a sandbox thing.

Gem

10-17-2004, 08:53 PM

thankyou for your replies.
About 10% were only listings.
Its not vitaly important right now as the site need to fill up with content. I dont expect to get fully cached with an empty site, and wouldnt expect others too either.
How much difference in each page would be necessary to avoid pages being duplicates? I dont want to change the look of the pages at all.
Each town has a 'Home' page...and these are going to look pretty similar to each other..if google wont cache these, how is it going to find the level below where the content is starting to be put?
GEM

fathom

10-18-2004, 05:49 AM

I don't believe in the sandboxing theory.

Nor do I... there is an interesting trend I have noted (but haven't tested as yet).

Duplicated content.

In all the sites I have observed that owners spectulate "sandbox" there is content that is remarkably the same as elsewhere in Google's archive... in comparison on new sites that appear to "not be effected" by the spectulations of sandbox - content is orginal.

Whether unilaterally true... I have no idea.

rustybrick

10-18-2004, 08:39 AM

Nor do I... there is an interesting trend I have noted (but haven't tested as yet).

Duplicated content.

In all the sites I have observed that owners spectulate "sandbox" there is content that is remarkably the same as elsewhere in Google's archive... in comparison on new sites that appear to "not be effected" by the spectulations of sandbox - content is orginal.

Whether unilaterally true... I have no idea.

Sorry to disagree, but there are plenty 'sandboxed' sites with unique (very unique) content.

sugarrae

10-18-2004, 08:55 AM

"Whether unilaterally true... I have no idea."

I've been testing the sandbox extensively and dup content isn't the issue. Although, I certainly wish it was. It would make things a lot easier.

I think the main confusion is that the sandbox is always referred to like it's a penalty, and it's not.

Gem

10-18-2004, 11:35 AM

Sandboxing?..I'm not so sure whether its there or not,and if so what guidelines it follows, which is why I asked(having not witnessed it previously).
28K pages of static HTML might explain the 'duplicate content' part :) ,but its early days for this site. Can i also ask for some feedback on these...

-what weight do you put on the meta-tag "index follow",important or not?-

-How much difference in each page would be necessary to avoid pages being duplicates? If they all have the same design/theme?-
Regards to all
GEM

I, Brian

10-18-2004, 02:03 PM

The problem with your site is simply that low PR pages are indexed more slowly - there is simply no incentive for Google to keep crawling such pages with any real frequency. And as your internal links are your only links to your deep content, so does your deep content take a long time to get indexed.

A recommendation would be to get some more links - there's a good list of directories here which are search engine friendly:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/webmasters/articles/6/

Get listed in as many of those as you can budget for, and try to get multiple deeplinks to your content as you can - I know some of those directories allow submissions of pages, rather than just a single site listing.

Another possibility is your purchasing text links from established sites - even if PageRank transfer is blocked, it should still get the spiders in, especially if you can budget for a handful of key deeplinks to your site from various purchased links.

Anyway, hope that helps. :)

Oh - just one last thing - it;s the new links to your site that could be sandboxed - but, alas, search engines demand patience to work with. :)

Gem

10-19-2004, 03:28 PM

Thanks for that link Brian, I will have a look at some.
GEM

update21Oct
google miraculously found a page...at last...
http://www.justoneuk.com/SouthEast/Guildford/Guildford.htm
and i am right where i want to be with my keywords...No3
Out of the sandbox>>Into the fire :eek:

Ok...its now found 60 pages...in the time it took to type this
I hope they dont disappear this time.
Regards to all, Brian thanks for that link again
GEM

hugo guzman

10-28-2004, 03:43 PM

Hugo here. This is my first post in this forum, but I know most of you "old timers" from other forums, etc....

I also don't suscribe to the the "Sandbox" theory, but I guess that really depends on what your definition of the Sandbox theory is:

IMO the sanbox refers to new sites that cannot rank well for relatively competitive search terms in Google even after months of relevant and potent backlink acquisition (and solid on-page optimization and content building). According to this theory, Google purposely imposes an increased "dampening" (devaluing) of newly acquired backlinks on new sites and maintains this dampening period for months (anywhere from 3 to 9 depending on who you ask). According to legend, this "sandbox" effect came about roughly 6 months ago.

I recently started a discussion about this with one of the moderators over at seochat: http://www.seoproject.com/forum/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=213

The gist of imy opinion is this...The increased difficulty the seo/webmasters are finding when trying to rank in the top 1-20 for relatively competitive terms is due to an overall increase in competition brought on by the rapid growth of the SEO industry. More and more webmasters are engaging in SEO tactics, so most "worthwhile" search terms are getting saturated with new competition.

A term that was relatively easy to optimize for 1 year ago (because of lack of competition) now has literally dozens or hundreds of competitors fighting for the same 10 to 20 spots, and this is further compounded by the fact that the webmasters already situated in the top 10 for the given search term are also hard at work (for the most) making sure that they don't lose their position (I know that I am!). I don't doubt that google does include a "dampening" factor on new backlinks, but I don't believe that the dampening has been increased in a significant way and I definitely don't believe that this dampening effect is sustained for months at a time.

It just seems to me that to many "newbie" optimizers are being sucked in by this latest "sandbox" conspiracy theory. It's easy to blame poor rankings on the google "boogie man" as opposed to exploring other contributing factors. I just hope that folks don't wake up a year from now and ask themselves "man! Have I been in the sandbox for a year?"

Marcia

10-28-2004, 03:55 PM

Sorry, but I can't agree that it's difficult to rank now because of increased competition. The signals for it just aren't pointing in that direction.

There is definitely something very real happening, so referring to it as sandboxing just means everyone knows what's being discussed. But it's got to be an algorithmic thing, since some sites take longer to come out of it (if at all) and there are some who know how to get around it - or do so by accident.

If it were increased competition, maybe well optimized sites would struggle with being in the 30's or 40's rather than top 10 or 20 - but not nowhere to be found.

hugo guzman

10-28-2004, 04:16 PM

Can you give a specific example of a site that has solid backlinks (quantity, relevance, and PR "potency"), did not previously engage in poorly executed cloaking, etc..., is not being penalized for dup content, and is nowhere to be found in SERPs?

Most folks that I have come across that refer to the "Sandbox" are not absent from the top 1000 (again this is just my experience).

"One word" megaterms aside, a properly executed seo strategy should yield at least top 200 results for target search terms within 90 days 99.9% of the time. Even if the "sandbox" were to exist, if a site is nowhere to be found in SERPs something seriously wrong.

The only managed site that I have come across in the past 8 months that was virtually "nowhere to be found" in Google (even though they were in the top 5 in Yahoo) was a travel site that engaged in some spam factory redirect scheme prior to coming onboard with my firm. They would alternate from roughly #395 (in google) to completely gone. After 3 months of obtaining legitimate backlinks (after removing the redirects) I concluded that the site in question was suffering from some sort of filter or penalty (possibly dup content or something relating to the Florida update).

Other than that, I have yet to work on a project (I've worked on roughly 25 different domains this year) were a site was nowhere to be found in SERPs after 30 days.

Marcia

10-28-2004, 06:16 PM

In all the sites I have observed that owners spectulate "sandbox" there is content that is remarkably the same as elsewhere in Google's archive... in comparison on new sites that appear to "not be effected" by the spectulations of sandbox - content is orginal.
Absolutely nothing similar, hand rolled pages with totally unique content, no funny stuff whatsoever. I don't do funny stuff, I'm a white hat. :)

are not absent from the top 1000
Being in the top 1000 or even top 200 will get someone a ride on the New York subway if they've got a token. It's ranking decently - if not top ten, at least top 20, 30, or even 40 that's needed, but that is not happening with new sites for anything near competitive.

The only managed site that I have come across in the past 8 months that was virtually "nowhere to be found" in Google (even though they were in the top 5 in Yahoo) was a travel site that engaged in some spam factory redirect scheme prior to coming onboard with my firm. They would alternate from roughly #395 (in google) to completely gone. After 3 months of obtaining legitimate backlinks (after removing the redirects) I concluded that the site in question was suffering from some sort of filter or penalty (possibly dup content or something relating to the Florida update).
If they got hit with Florida then it's an older, not a new site - the site/domain is way before the onset of this current phenomenon, which has nothing to do with recovering from a penalty.

Other than that, I have yet to work on a project (I've worked on roughly 25 different domains this year) were a site was nowhere to be found in SERPs after 30 days.
Let's set a timeframe then. How many brand new domains have you put up for the first time since - let's say, since July 1st - that are now ranking in the top 20 for competitive terms - commercial terms with a good number of searches shown with the Overture tool - like a few thousand, and let's say 500K+ pages returned at Google?

How many of those have ranked, then we can tell if this phenomenon even applies to the sites?

Added:
Sheesh, did this thread get way off the track from the original question asked or what? The original situation in the first post is an indexing issue - not a sandboxing issue.

hugo guzman

10-28-2004, 07:42 PM

I have not launched a brand new site since July 1st. However, I have several that launched in mid April of this year and achieve top ten ranking (Including one that achieved top ten ranking for a one word government term "FCC" within 90 days).

I will be launching a commercial site within the next 15 days or so. The site will be targeting moderately competitive search terms that receive 5k or more searches per month using the Overture tool (100 per day using Wordtracker).

I will chronical my adventures with this "virgin" site, and see if I can put my money were my mouth is!

P.S.
The number of searches returned for a given search phrase is not a good indicator of a terms competition/difficulty. It does not account for the number of unique pages within that search return that are being actively optimized (at the page or domain level). A term that returns 70,000 searches can easily be more competitive than a term that returns 1 million.

I, Brian

10-29-2004, 11:15 AM

Just in case it's of interest, I placed a real example of possible sandboxing here:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2004/10/what_the_google.html

After extensive link-building, almost all keywords refused to get any serious ranking - until they all suddenly impacted on exactly the same day.

What's interesting is that a couple of keywords were fine for ranking before then.

At the time, my intitial impression was that keywords were ranking on PageRank values of the links only, with anchor text purposefully not counted for a set period.

Just to add to the discussion.

NFFC

10-29-2004, 11:22 AM

>top ten ranking for a one word government term "FCC" within 90 days

No adwords for that, no adwords = no sandbox.

hugo guzman

10-29-2004, 11:50 AM

NFCC:
So you're saying that google somehow manually implements the "sandbox" on specific search terms?

I tend to doubt that.

There are way too many unique search terms in order for that to be feasible. Also, the term "FCC" is difficult to optimize for because it is competing with .gov and .edu pages. Why would google somehow not subject a site to the "sandbox" for a high traffic government term (1,000 uniques per day according to Overture, 3,000 per day according to Wordtracker)? Just because it's not a commercial term that lends itself to adwords?

Either google implements the "sandbox" universally or not all (IMO).

If you feel that the "sandbox" could be implemented on specific (more competitive) terms, please explain.

I, Brian:
Thanks for the input. There is not doubt google may be implementing a "dampening" effect on new backlinks, but that has always existed. In fact, the first "PR" article published by the google founders makes mention of a specific dampening factor on links. This dampening "stage" for new links usually lasts somewhere between 15 and 45 days (in my experience).

Based on the assumption that an seo/webmaster is performing ongoing link acquisition and acquires the required number of quality backlinks (relevant and potent) in a 90 day span, those new links should all end their "dampening" stage between 105 and 135 days after the site is launched (roughly 3 to 4 months). However, there is an additional variable to consider here. Assuming that the competitors that are already in the top 10 or 20 for the specific target search term in question have also been acquiring new links, and some or all of those new links are also ending their "dampening" stage, it become increasingly difficult to overtake them. In addition, google may be giving more "weight" to relevant (non duplicate) content, so an established site (that has thousands of pages of relevant content) will have the upper hand over a newer site that has an equal amount of "backlinks", but does not possess an equal amount of content.

I do not deny that there are some strong arguments for why a "sandbox" might exist. I'm just expressing the opinion that other (non-google initiated) factors may account for the increased difficulty associated with getting new sites to rank well in Google SERPs.

mcanerin

10-29-2004, 12:51 PM

I don't buy the whole sandbox idea, either. What would make the links suddenly be worth something at the end of 2 or 3 (or 6 or 9!) months and worth nothing earlier? They are either useless or not. It's not like a IBL stops being spammy if you have it for longer than a couple of months.

I've had a different theory for a while regarding this. It's just a theory, though - I have no proof either way, but it does seem to be the simplest explaination to me (Occam's Razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor)). I usually don't consider "evil conspiracies to screw website owners" as my first choice for an explanation for search engine behavior.

Remember back when Google routinely gave new pages an "estimated" PR without having actually checked them out completely? Then in a month or so the "real" one would come down the pipe and was often lower, resulting in hordes of panicked new webmasters flooding the forums with "what did I do wrong?!" posts? I do.

Google has apparently stopped doing this. Now, your site doesn't get a PR until it's finished actually *checking* your backlinks.

With me so far? Now, what do you do if you have a very competitive phrase you are trying to compete in and a brand new site? Right. Go forth and get thee a bounty of links, my son....

Now, if it takes at least a month to process and publish the PR for the links on a site with 10 low PR backlinks (for example), then is it reasonable to expect that a site with a 100 or 1000 higher PR links, PLUS all the backlinks connected to those, and to those in turn, get processed in the same amount of time? Remember, the higher the PR of a site linking to you, the more links G would have to check, by definition.

Not only do you have to check the links themselves, but also their relationship to your site, related sites, and to each other. This can potentially include millions of sites.

I imagine it may take a few months for all those to get checked - until then you would not receive a PR.

Result? Sites who are new and slowly building links don't really see an issue. PR would simply trickle in over time. Sites that add a few links a month also don't really see much of a delay, but a site who gets a lot of high PR links within a very short period of time would see a long delay while they were sorted out. In the meantime it would appear they have no credit for them, when in fact G is simply checking for link farms, footer spam, etc so it can assign a PR weight to each link.

The result could look like a penalty on link buying or competitive keywords, but in reality it could very well be a simple issue of processing power and time.

I imagine this would be a necessary aspect of block level analysis and similar link weighting algos. It takes longer to assign the appropriate weight to give a link when you are actually trying to figure out what it means rather than just dividing the PR of the page by the raw number of links.

My opinion,

Ian

NFFC

10-29-2004, 01:12 PM

> So you're saying that google somehow manually implements the "sandbox" on specific search terms?

No. I was more putting the ball back in your court, almost a challenge.

Do what you did with FCC in 90 days but on a keyword with a respectable number of adwords. It can be done but only by bypassing the sandbox, if you don't believe there is a sandbox then you will be unlikely to be able to bypass it, ergo I don't think it can be done.

hugo guzman

10-29-2004, 01:42 PM

<snip>

Anyhow, I didn't quite understand your last sentence:
"It can be done but only by bypassing the sandbox, if you don't believe there is a sandbox then you will be unlikely to be able to bypass it, ergo I don't think it can be done."

How can I bypass the "sandbox"? If I "bypass" it than it doesn't exist. If it can be "bypassed" once than it is not universal, and is therefore not a google implemented phenomenon, but rather the result of other variables.

I have other sites that are ranking quite nicely, but they were started in late February throught early March of this year, and some folks would say that those wouldn't "qualify" for the purposes of discussing the "sandbox" effect (Incidentally those sites took roughly 95 to 135 days to achieve top 10 ranking for Adsense heavy terms).

As I mentioned earlier, I will be launching a commercial site targeting heavily competitive terms within 2 weeks or so. I will hopefully be able to put this "Sandbox" question to rest one way or another.

mcanerin,
That was lucid, carefully thought out, and insightful post! (But only because you agree with me...LOL)

I, Brian

11-01-2004, 01:03 PM

Thanks for the input. There is not doubt google may be implementing a "dampening" effect on new backlinks, but that has always existed. In fact, the first "PR" article published by the google founders makes mention of a specific dampening factor on links. This dampening "stage" for new links usually lasts somewhere between 15 and 45 days (in my experience).

Would you please have a specific reference for that? It does sound like a very intriguing idea, but I simply don't remember the concept every arising before - neither this explanation.

hugo guzman

11-01-2004, 01:29 PM

Let me clear up two distinct issues here:

1)The document that I'm refering to is the famous "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" which can be found here:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html#ref

2)My assertion in my previous post is almost 100% garbage. Google has never explicitly sites a "dampening" factor on inbound links (this is my own speculation). The term that I was thinking of, that is contained in that document, is "damping" which explained in this way:

2.1.2 Intuitive Justification
PageRank can be thought of as a model of user behavior. We assume there is a "random surfer" who is given a web page at random and keeps clicking on links, never hitting "back" but eventually gets bored and starts on another random page. The probability that the random surfer visits a page is its PageRank. And, the d damping factor is the probability at each page the "random surfer" will get bored and request another random page. One important variation is to only add the damping factor d to a single page, or a group of pages. This allows for personalization and can make it nearly impossible to deliberately mislead the system in order to get a higher ranking. We have several other extensions to PageRank, again see [Page 98].

This has absolutely nothing to do with any "dampening" affect on inbound links. Sorry for the incredibly misleading and poorly researched post.

However, the idea of "dampening" is valid, but google has not confirmed or denied this factor as far as I know.

I, Brian

11-02-2004, 06:27 AM

No problem, and thank you for clearing that up. :)

I've read a number of public domain Google papers, but I don't recall ever having seen a "dampening factor" for inbound links described. Hence my curiosity.

creativecraig

11-02-2004, 04:17 PM

randfish

11-02-2004, 06:20 PM

I've spent most of my time over the past 6 months looking into and around 'sandboxing' - which I feel is a very poor choice of a term, but nonetheless, too popular to be done away with.

I wrote as much 'conclusive' information as I could about it at - http://www.socengine.com/seo/guide/sandbox-march-filter.html

This post certainly presents some new ideas to think about, but the theory that PR takes 2-4 months to calculate seems very naive to me. The SERPs certainly seem to indicate that PR has lost much of its influence, and the PR updates from March-June and the last one in October seem to be taking fairly recent links into account.

Of course, with GG, nothing is what it "seems"...

bwelford

11-03-2004, 10:01 AM

I'm currently exploring a wild theory that a search which repeats the keyword avoids the sandbox effect. In other words, if you do a search for 'keyword', sandboxing applies. If you do a search for 'keyword+keyword', then you avoid the sandbox on back-links. What do others think?

randfish

11-03-2004, 08:37 PM

bwelford

11-03-2004, 09:03 PM

Yes, I only tried it for single keywords. I couldn't see anything significant if I tried keyword phrases in quotes, and doubled them up.

Gem

11-04-2004, 01:10 AM

to add fuel to the fire, and quote from my original post,

< http://www.justoneuk.com has less than 30 pages indexed by Google after 4 months >

on 21 Oct it went up to 60, now its 200.
(note: I am not expecting miracles, 2% cached would be great, the site is huge and 99.9% empty)

An awful lot of internet faithful seem to be discussing what apparently doesn't exist, and a lot are discussing the SAME phenomenon, its not like we seeing UFO's..there are more witnesses than that. So it might just.

donut

11-08-2004, 08:50 PM

IMO, sandboxing is simply a time period, having nothing to do with links. I've launched 3 new sites in the past 6 months, none terribly competitive.

One was 301 d from an existing site where it ranked #1 across the board, and it has yet to see the light of day.

Another was launched with several thousand links from a related site- a footer link- as well as various directory and other good links. Still sandboxed.

A third site just was launched with a few linksfrom related sites. Still not ranking well.

I think the simplest answer may be the right one- new domains just aren't going to rank well for 4-6 months. Unless someone can point me to a newly launched site with the "magic forumla" of incoming links that did get indexed and start ranking well, I think it applies to all new sites.

hugo guzman

11-08-2004, 09:45 PM

You are making the mistake of assuming that because those 3 particular sites have not ranked well within a given time period (let's say 4 months) then all sites are being prevented from ranking well universally.

Your examples are interesting, but without specifics (URL info & what your target search terms are) we can't make any definitive conclusions.

Would you mind sharing url and keyword info?

fathom

11-08-2004, 10:10 PM

bwelford - maybe I'm not doing it right, but when I do a search for:

"my keyword phrase"+"my keyword phrase", My sandboxed site isn't in top 500 whereas it's usually at least #50

Does your idea only work for single word kw phrases?

"my keyword phrase" is a specific "precise query"

+

"my keyword phrase" is a specific "precise query"

So what you are asking Google is only match this + that because (I assume) you want to see "your page" and not just any page.

Any chance that the two "precise" phrases are associated with traditional keyword anchors for your industry?

While a "title" that contains both precise matches would be important and you would assume "any such title would be near the top"... website/pages that have more precise anchors for "this precise match" + "that precise match" + a title containing both would push you down in results.

Unquote the two phrases - and I suspect you will find your page alot higher (like around #30).

Searching habits is not "sandbox"... try allintitle: as your search criteria your #1

donut

11-09-2004, 08:15 AM

Sorry- can't give out client info. ;)

And no, I'm not assuming that my small sample applies to everything- I just haven't seen or heard any examples that refute it. In all the SEO forums out there, I haven't seen anyone post anything about how their brand new site is doing great right out of the gate.

I'm not sure why everyone jumped to the conclusion that tons of links were the problem- it's just that the people with tons of links were the first to notice that their sites were ignored in the rankings for a period of time.

I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong.

randfish

11-09-2004, 12:06 PM

hardball

11-09-2004, 01:34 PM

Sandbox is real, it's a war. Google vs. SEO.

How long do you figure that google figures it will take to kill most SEO? Bigger question is how long can google win the battle without losing the war?

fathom

11-09-2004, 08:39 PM

donut -

Don't worry, you're in great company. What we call "sandbox" is as real as can be. If you take only the most conservative interpretation, which is:

1. A site launched since March of 2004
2. That has allinanchor position #1 for several kw phrases
3. That ranks #1 for those phrases at MSN & Yahoo!
4. That has more links & quality links than its competitors (this is tough to measure)
5. That doesn't rank in the top 50-100 at Google

That's something new. It did not exist before spring of 2004. We call it the sandbox, and it gets misinterpretated and mis-applied, but that doesn't mean it's not real. There are sites who have ranked well in the first 4-6 months since launch this year, and it's up to us to figure out the difference between those sites and sites that suffer under sandbox.

About the same time: Frequently Asked (hhttp://www.google.com/search?q=Frequently+Asked&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&start=10&sa=N) was launched (end March) - it now sits at #18th for "frequently asked" - the mainpage is mere PR5 with PR 7, 8, 9 pages above and below it.

New pages added today rank in 48 to 72 hours like:

third party surveys (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=third+party+surveys) #1, 2

independent surveys (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&q=independent+surveys&spell=1) #3, 4

EMarketing Guide (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=EMarketing+Guide) #7, 8

Benchmarking Customer Satisfaction (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=Benchmarking+Customer+Satisfaction) #7

Because of fresh... but many times they don't drop after the fresh wave is over... there seems to be a parallel between "how unique the content is" and whether it remains at the top.

More often than not website internal link architecture, duplicate content with linking partners, or "too much, too fast" - particularly in link development and focusing on but a few phrases creates (IMHO the illusion of) sandbox - when in fact it is actually something else that can be control by the promoter and not by the search engine (e.g. Google induced).

randfish

11-09-2004, 09:15 PM

Fathom -

It sounds like your interpretation is that Google screens for common SEO link building tactics and penalizes sites based on this. It's an interesting theory - I wonder if it's testable...

My point is merely that a new piece of information is being included in Google's ranking system. The list I made is a good way to tell if you're being affected, but the specific causes/triggers are still very unknown.

Marcia

11-09-2004, 09:54 PM

randfish
It sounds like your interpretation is that Google screens for common SEO link building tactics and penalizes sites based on this. It's an interesting theory - I wonder if it's testable...
It isn't a penalty, there's been no indication of a penalty and there have been sites that simply popped out - just a few months ago.

My point is merely that a new piece of information is being included in Google's ranking system. The list I made is a good way to tell if you're being affected, but the specific causes/triggers are still very unknown.
Yep, it's more like something is missing that it takes to rank now.

BTW, March is 8 months ago, there's been update since then with some sites coming out of it and some not. And blogs aren't like commercial terms on commercial sites.

Nothing to do with freshness. Sites that went up over the summer and were updated with new pages added almost daily are stuck in limbo. No duplicates whatsoever.

It's like Florida in overdrive.

donut

11-09-2004, 10:04 PM

About the same time: Frequently Askedwas launched (end March) - it now sits at #18th for "frequently asked" -

March- October ;7 months later.

Still supports the idea that sandboxing has nothing whatsoever to do with links and is more about delayed ranking.

Does anyone actually have a site (not heard about it or know a friend of a friend who had one) that came out of the box (not a subdomain) and rose to the top of the rankings (even mildly competitive ones) in a month or two, as we used to see?

I'm willing to believe it- I just haven't seen it. Without that evidence, all of this guesstimating about links is just throwing red herrings at the issue. Rule out the simplest expanation before moving on to the complex theories.

So- who can rule out a simple date delay filter?

hugo guzman

11-09-2004, 10:43 PM

...More often than not website internal link architecture, duplicate content with linking partners, or "too much, too fast" - particularly in link development and focusing on but a few phrases creates (IMHO the illusion of) sandbox - when in fact it is actually something else that can be control by the promoter and not by the search engine (e.g. Google induced)...

Well put!

This is not a "google induced" phenomenon.

fathom

11-09-2004, 11:00 PM

Fathom -

It sounds like your interpretation is that Google screens for common SEO link building tactics and penalizes sites based on this. It's an interesting theory - I wonder if it's testable...

Forget the word penalty - look at this in the term "natural" or "manipulation"...

1. a natural link pattern is built over time... one link at a time different in some way... domain, IP, anchor, text in proximity, position of page, etc.

2. a manipulation is a single link added to a footer of a 1000 website where all the the previous chararcteristics are now the same, or a search/find/replace tool.

My point is merely that a new piece of information is being included in Google's ranking system. The list I made is a good way to tell if you're being affected, but the specific causes/triggers are still very unknown.

Agree - so: Change the pattern - you change the outcome.

Dj Morri

11-09-2004, 11:13 PM

hugo guzman

11-09-2004, 11:24 PM

fathom

11-09-2004, 11:59 PM

Yep, it's more like something is missing that it takes to rank now.

BTW, March is 8 months ago, there's been update since then with some sites coming out of it and some not. And blogs aren't like commercial terms on commercial sites.

Nothing to do with freshness. Sites that went up over the summer and were updated with new pages added almost daily are stuck in limbo. No duplicates whatsoever.

It's like Florida in overdrive.

It disappointing to see (hear) that websites are not coming back. What's also dismaying that a commercial website "must" be only limited to the selling of products.

Clearly "if" blogs does the job and an eComm "only" doesn't - add a blog.

Clearly "if" a news/article CMS does the job and an eComm "only" doesn't - add a news/article CMS

The eComm "only" line of thinking falls under website architecture... pics, snappy descriptions & "buy" buttons cannot compete (internally) with limited on-page information, limited supporting link structure thus relying only on the weight of the title (element/page title) and then external links, links, links - it's simply an inferior strategy.

Internal informative content drive & supports eComm especially in search engines, but more importantly for the visitor.... it offers "choice":

Choice of learning (thus credibility), choice going directly into the buy mode.

In the end IMHO 'sandbox' is not using the available tools to make your website superior.

Dj Morri

11-10-2004, 10:25 AM

that's nothing new. A lot of people rank well for "other" search engines. Google is the naturally the toughest to optimize for because everyone and their momma is competing for top spots in big G.

Do you rank #1 in Yahoo?

Hugo I rank #1 on Yahoo, MSN, Alltheweb, search, altavista, lycos, etc. every search engine and f**** Google 240. There are website that don't even had a keyword in their pages adn they rank better than me.

Marcia

11-10-2004, 10:53 AM

Clearly "if" blogs does the job and an eComm "only" doesn't - add a blog.
It isn't that it's a blog, it's that it isn't "spending money" terms. I've got a blog that's only up several weeks and it's outranking a long established, highly reputed site for the person's own name.

Agree - so: Change the pattern - you change the outcome.
It only changes the pattern if someone knows exactly what it takes. Only a few do know what it takes, and they're not out publicly telling it around.

In the end IMHO 'sandbox' is not using the available tools to make your website superior.
Sorry, but it isnt a matter of superior; it's a matter of knowing what it's about. Superior before isn't the same thing as meeting algo requirements now. Lots of superior sites are languishing down at the bottom of the heap.

hugo guzman

11-10-2004, 11:37 AM

Marcia,
Technically, it is a matter of "superior" technique. "Superior" in terms of google, can only be defined as achieving favorable rankings. If a site is "languishing down at the bottom of the heap" it is not superior.

That would be like stating that the engineering in my new race car is superior, yet languishes in the worst positions of the race while other new cars with "different" engineering are challenging for first place.

DJ Morri,
Like I mentioned before, being #1 in the "other" engines does not guarantee top ranking in Google. I have several new sites that are top 5 for their target terms in Yahoo, etc... yet languish in the 200 range in Google. But there are reasons for this (namely extreme competition among seo/webmasters targeting the same terms in google and/or my unwillingness to properly fund seo promotion efforts for the particular site because of an increased focus on my other more important projects).

If you provide me with your url and keyword(s), I would be happy to do an analysis. You can PM me if you're uncomfortable posting that info publicly.

fathom

11-10-2004, 11:44 AM

It isn't that it's a blog, it's that it isn't "spending money" terms.

If I may elaborate on this... (not sure if I understand correctly).

The is targetting (or rather ranking) on phrases that pretty much guarantee "I only want a freebee" or "not actually generate traffic". Is this correct?

It only changes the pattern if someone knows exactly what it takes. Only a few do know what it takes, and they're not out publicly telling it around.

It's unlikely a case of "not sharing" and more of "not intimately familiar with the "specific website"... there isn't a cookie cut strategies (for lack of better terms) that matches all situations.

All clients are different in their attributes that they bring to the table, and they all have different websites, in different industries and all targeting different markets... compared to this... Google itself is pretty predictable.

Sorry, but it isnt a matter of superior; it's a matter of knowing what it's about. Superior before isn't the same thing as meeting algo requirements now. Lots of superior sites are languishing down at the bottom of the heap.

It's easier to look at this in reverse, rather than attempting to determine what works - chip away what doesn't then you are left with the pieces that will actually "help".