The Google sand box

[Newbie_Marketer]

I have recently had the same problem with a new site, when it was initially indexed I was on page 5 of google and since the last 2-3 days I am nowhere to be seen in google but am ranked in yahoo. Does this mean I am in the sandbox or do I just need some backlinks. At the moment I only have 3 backlinks and one is from MIXX.

I am indexed I am just not in the top 100. It might have something to do with the quality of the site but I suspect it has something to do with my link building skills.

[c14h20o4]

Hiya Newbie,

Don't worry about whether you're in the sandbox or not, it doesn't really matter too much. Consider the numbers below which show traffic percentage based on Google SERPS (9038794 searches, 4926623 clicks) (source, seobook How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?). The section I'm quoting from is from around the middle of the page... Big Pie Chart.

1. 42.13%, 2,075,765 clicks
2. 11.90%, 586,100 clicks
3. 8.50%, 418,643 clicks
4. 6.06%, 298,532 clicks
5. 4.92%, 242,169 clicks
6. 4.05%, 199,541 clicks
7. 3.41%, 168,080 clicks
8. 3.01%, 148,489 clicks
9. 2.85%, 140,356 clicks
10. 2.99%, 147,551 clicks

1st page totals: 89.82%, 4,425,226 clicks
2nd page totals: 10.18%, 501,397 clicks

See that #1 is getting 42% of the clicks and #2 is 11.90% or about 3.5 times less traffic than #1. Also note that all of the pages on page one get 89.82% of the clicks and all of the traffic on page 2 gets 10.18% of the clicks which means that overall page 1 and 2 are getting 100% of the clicks. Taking error into account, if your not on page 1 or page 2, you're getting a negligible amount of traffic. So what's the difference between being in "the sandbox" or being on page 4? I'd say not much, especially if you have a young site with no real long tail traffic yet.

Now compare that to what action you need to take to get either out of the sandbox or into the top ten results because the solution is the same--Creating content and Building steady links. Whether you're in the sandbox (which I doubt unless it's a spammy niche and you've been doing spammy things) or if you're ranked #525 in the serps, do those two things and you'll eventually pop up. It might not be next week but it will happen in time.

Hope that helps,
Chris

[robertwells]

The sandbox (Google penalty) is a name given to an observation on how Google ranks web pages in its index. It is the object of debate, there has been written about but not confirmed and several observer states which have seen otherwise.

[eniminimyni]

The quality of content that is worthy of social bookmarking, and making bookmarks rather easy for readers to use, can bring a lot of traffic. That the traffic seems to impress Google.

[bigbadsoul]

Quality content that is worthy of social bookmarking, & making that bookmarking simple for your readers to make use of, can bring a LOT of traffic. That traffic seems to impress Google.

[macgizmoguy]

I've observed time and time again: Google tends to 'feel-up' or sample new sites let rise high in the SERPS for a week or four at most - and then down into the Real-World rankings you go. Perhaps more accurately it allows a brief Broad-Match for keywords initially - but then pulls sites down and with a much more narrower range of largely Exact-Match keywords for an extended period. You've GOT to keep working on the site during this phase, but often you can blog and backlink till you're blue in the face and it will NOT open up some magic floodgate - until Goog decides to let it.

As others have observed, there does seem to be a 3/6/9/12mo (it can be rather arbitrary) point where your site finally gets 'Let Out of Its Cage' so to speak. You'll see some degree of jump in traffic (i.e. you now rank better for a larger set of certain keywords (Exact and Broad.)

From there, it's the Google Dance up and down, with sometimes extreme daily fluctuations that don't seem justified. This often can be for top keywords you are on the CUSP of Page 1 for: In Position 9 one day, but then some hot news about your niche bumps you temporarily to Page 2 and traffic sags severely. The point here is to be aware how when you finally get up to the bottom of Page 1 it can be really rocky - and a good sign you should start being MUCH more precise about the anchor keywords when link building - to start deliberately driving very specific keywords up the ranks.

[itsanewidhere]

Quality content that is importent for social bookmarking, and making that bookmarking simple for your readers to make use of,one can bring a lots of traffic,that traffic seems to impress Google.

[macgizmoguy]

The only time I haven't seen a Sandbox effect - is if you're lucky enough to find a high-traffic niche with (literally) very low or no competition. I've had new sites take off and hold strong - and just grow from there as I continued to build backlinks.

This can happen with, say, new products or technologies. Imagine you build a site DEDICATED to that emerging Topic/Niche. The only real competition out there might be a Press Release, or a Blog Post or News blurb about it -- but they are not from sites ALL about - and ONLY about that thing.

It's easy to become THE Authority site on emerging opportunities, be the first to jump on it, and lock in a good keyword loaded domain name. If you're good at on-page and link-building - you can nail markets that keyword research tools would tell you that there isn't any traffic for, and would FALSELY lead you to believe it isn't going after!!! (Yet!)

Opportunities like this usually don't have much if any Sandbox effect. Proof that sometimes its best to trust your gut and knowledge/expertise of a market - and NOT always let statistics and number permutations of SEO tools using DATA FROM THE PAST tell you what niches/keywords are truly worth going after...

[jonsen]

Google sandbox is a place where google places the new domains after temporarily reducing their page ranks for few weeks before bringing them in top SERP rankings.