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#1
10-17-2004
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Sandboxing?
Hi all
My lastest venture http://www.justoneuk.com has less than 30 pages indexed by Google after 4 months. Other sites i have worked on do fantastically better using the same techniques employed in this one.Once the pages are found..no problem Is this a result of sandboxing? ..also what weight do you put on the meta-tag "index follow" as i have had good results on other sites not using it. REGARDS GEM 
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#2
10-17-2004
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Does Sandboxing exist?
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.
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#3
10-17-2004
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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.
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#4
10-17-2004
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"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.
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#5
10-17-2004
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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
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#6
10-18-2004
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Quote:
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.
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#7
10-18-2004
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Quote:
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#8
10-18-2004
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"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.
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#9
10-18-2004
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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
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#10
10-18-2004
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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.
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#11
10-19-2004
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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/G.../Guildford.htm and i am right where i want to be with my keywords...No3 Out of the sandbox>>Into the fire  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 Last edited by Gem : 10-21-2004 at 04:24 PM. Reason: updated
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#12
10-28-2004
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me neither
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/inde...y;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?"
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#13
10-28-2004
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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.
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#14
10-28-2004
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examples..
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.
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#15
10-28-2004
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Quote:
Quote:
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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. Last edited by Marcia : 10-28-2004 at 06:46 PM.
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#16
10-28-2004
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I'm starting a brand new site in a week or so
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.
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#17
10-29-2004
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Just in case it's of interest, I placed a real example of possible sandboxing here:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archi...he_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.
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#19
10-29-2004
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...
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.
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#20
10-29-2004
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sandboxing....
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). 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
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International SEO Last edited by mcanerin : 10-29-2004 at 01:06 PM.
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