Apr 16
What is the Google Sandbox?
I thought I would take a moment to write a quick post about the Google sandbox, what it is, how to get out of it and why you may end up there in the first place.
To those who do not know the Google sandbox is something that is constantly in discussion among search engine optimisers on the web and around the SEO forums.
The sandbox refers to a filter that Google applies to a site and its rankings. When you are in the sandbox you will normally notice a number of things one of which is that although you may have many backlinks and a well optimized site, you still rank very poorly for your chosen keywords. As long has you have not been practicing blackhat SEO this will more than likely mean that you have been sandboxed.
Another indication that you may have been sandboxed is that you are ranking fairly well on MSN and Yahoo! but are languishing around in the high hundreds on Google for the same search terms.
Generally speaking, the sandbox mostly affects new websites and the period at which you are sandboxed can range from anything between 1 month and 1 year, depending on the competitive nature of your chosen keywords.
For example, if you were targeting a very competitive search term such as real estate, credit cards, mortgages etc, you can pretty much gaurantee that you will be sandboxed for between 6 months and a year. This period is reduced when it comes to less competitive search terms.
So the next question you may ask is “Why do Google use a sandbox?”.
Well, the straight answer to that one is that it is used to filter out spam sites and prevent them from popping up overnight, making a killing and then disappearing. Think of it as a probationary period for your site. Its all about trust. The more links you have and the older your site, the more you are trusted by the search engines.
When you think about it, its the same for a bricks and mortar business. The longer you have been around the more your brand will be recognised and the more trust you will have built up(hopefully).
There is nothing wrong with being in the sandbox, its quite natural and a normal process.
Below is a few tips on what to do in order to escape the sandbox or at least, give yourself a boost once the sandbox has been lifted on your site.
- Keep building good quality relevant links
- Make sure your content is regularly updated including adding new pages
- Do NOT revert to blackhat techniques
- Get yourself into dmoz or the yahoo directories and other top quality dirs
- Make sure each page on your site is unique and that titles, meta data and copy is different
- Submit your site to as many social bookmarking sites as you can. Make sure they are dofollowed sites
If you follow the above and keep doing all the right things, you will escape the sandbox. Its just a matter of time.
One of the most important virtues of an SEO is patience.
There is an excercise that you can try that will indicate where your site will potentially appear within the SERPS once the sandbox filter on your site has been lifted.
Go to Google and type in “allintitle: your keyword phrase”
You will need to use the keywords that you have targeted within your page title. So if you were targeting “real estate spain” you would type in(without the quotes) “allintitle:real estate spain”. Now, look through the results and find your site. This will then show you roughly where you should appear once the filter has been lifted. You can also use “allinanchor: keyword phrase”
I have been testing this recently on one site that isnt targeting really competitive terms and it seems to be a good indicator for future ranking positions. I will do some further tests and report my findings once I have more information.
So there you have it. The Google sandbox. Love or loathe it, its not such a bad idea and may help to filter out the constant crappy sites that seem to be clogging up the net on a daily basis. Nobody likes spammy MFA (made for ads) sites muddying the serps, me included.
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