I have been out of the business for 12 months and only just read about "the sandbox" which makes total sense! Doh! Should have come here earlier.

Q) Do we think there is an opposite to the sandbox in play? Are older sites (e.g. 5 years+) getting automatic improved ranking.....or once out of the sandbox is it a level playing field?

Clearly the sandbox makes sense for google on several scores but notably:

a) Increases adword spend. Those forced to start with adwords may become hooked. The crack cocaine of SEO.

b) Makes an SEO's job very hard when he must tell a client "Yeah I can optimise your site but dont expect to see ANY results for 6-9 months minimum - and I mean ANY results". By which time the client will be suitably unimpressed with your efforts.

Clearly I think the huge downside is that of course it keeps lots of fresh sites and information out of the results which is 100% counter to what they should be trying to achieve with a good engine. Being "anti" new players in the world of e-commerce and the internet is just so wrong.

I also feel that the war against SEO guys is perhaps also counter-productive. In the commercial world no-one is gonna pay hard cash to get rankings for a site that is unrelated or of no interest to the public. I would say by definition those that use optmise their sites are 9 times out of 10 producing good and relevant results for the viewer.

Still - I guess for those out the sandbox it is great! There are always winners and losers.

Yes, there is an opposite, old sites and pages are heavily favored in Google currently. This creates a situation virtually the polar opposite of what made google successful: the most uptodate and complete results available on the web.

I see the sandbox as an absolute failure of the current algo, plus it had the side affect of, as you noted, forcing new sites to use adwords. Before the IPO, if you follow basic business, it was very important to boost quarterly results to boost initial share prices. After IPO it is very important to keep them high so that when the main google share holders start selling off their shares they will get maximum returns. Given that google shares are currently selling at a Price/Earnings of about 235 [sane p/e is about 12-25, Microsoft is at 35], these shares are currently roughly 10 times overvalued. It's critical that google maintain this share price for the next few months as the big guys start selling their stock off [and they have already filed to do so, which shows what they think google is really worth]. A dip in income could potentially cause a severe slide in share price. So adwords income must be maintained at a high level. Thus the sandbox is not going anywhere until the founders have sold their share blocks. Even if this destroys the company long term, and hurts countless website owners. As usual, 'do no evil' means 'don't get caught'

Playing Devil's advocate I can see some merit in the concept that older results are perhaps more worthy of higher results. So I could see an argument for some positive weighting to older websites (if they have survived this long they must have something of merit to offer etc).

However it looks to me like the sandbox is an over-heavy penalty.

I could see a secondary market emerging for "non sandbox" web URLS with vague names. I have an old indexed domain and may now switch this to a new website I was setting up - silly huh!

<< I could see a secondary market emerging for "non sandbox" web URLS with vague names. I have an old indexed domain and may now switch this to a new website I was setting up - silly huh! >>

that market is already here. Buy an old established domain with PR, start slowly building it up. There is no other reliable way to get in the serps fast, but you have to be careful to make slow changes, not a whole new site at once.

There's merit to giving older sites some weight, not nearly as much as they are currently doing. There's no merit for dumping new sites in the sandbox, as some examples show clearly.

Candidate x runs for office. 9 monnths before the election, he creates a website. Website is sandboxed, comes out just after the election. New movie comes out, makes website, website is sandboxed until months after release. New hardware website comes up, with stunningly amazing hardware reviews, better than tomshardware etc. Site is sandboxed for 9 months, information, which is unique and better than anything else available, is not available to searchers.

Even accepting that the primary cause of the sandbox is the effort to get rid of spam, which I don't believe is the main cause, since it also conveniently forces new site owners to spend a lot on adwords, the problem is spam. Let's try another industry: new cars cannot use major freeways or bridges until they have been driven for 6-9 months because there is too much traffic.

The solution is to get rid of the spam, change the algo to find it, change the procedure, expand the methods used etc, that's google's job, they aren't doing their job anymore, but they are all going to be very very rich as soon as they sell of those big blocks of stocks they have recently filed to sell [no, they don't believe that google shares are worth what they are selling for, or else they'd be keeping them]. As somebody said not long ago: follow the money.

It is slightly depressing but back to the harsh realities of life. Google have clearly joined the ranks of the blood-sucking corporates. I don't know why I was kidding myself it could ever be any other way really.

I cannot really complain. Google had a major positive influence on the successful business I sold in late 2003, and I too banked the cash (new owners still reaping the rewards of a top 10 ranking).

Just so long as I know the gloves are off as it were

I will spend the next 24 hours considering the game, and will develop an appropriate strategy. I have the feeling that the strategy will be multiple different sites selling the same products - hedging my bets for the future.

I will be smart about it. Different domains, different IP numbers, different text, different links etc etc.

Armed with the "sandbox" info I also may put my other new business on hold. Just stick up the URL's with pure information pages only, and a couple of incoming links, and wait 6-9 months until it is released from the sandbox. Frankly it is uneconomic for me to go live with holding stock etc and be forced to rely 100% on pay-per-click business with zero natural clicks (due to the high cost of clicks in my chosen area).

I understand the theory that no-one should rely on google for their business. However when you ARE a pure e-commerce business there is no point in existing without traffic from google either natural or pay-per-click. If the business you are entering is expensive (i.e. competitive) on the pay-per-click and you now KNOW you are not gonna get any natural business - then its not worth starting.

The choices are now tougher for a new e-commerce business:

1. Get into a "niche" business where the margins are high and pay-per-click affordable.

2. Get into a competitive market but understand that you are gonna lose more money in the 1st 12 months than you would have done in the past.

3. Seed the URL's now - then come back in 6-9 months when they might actually be useable.

Personally it looks like #3 for me, but I prefer things to be more exciting and dynamic than that normally.

Anyone tell me a simple way to see which of my domains are in the sandbox and which not?

A quick and dirty way is to find a competitive term your sandboxed site should be ranking for, and probably is ranking for in beta.search.man.com and search.yahoo.com.

Find where that term is ranking in Google. If it's very far down in the serps, the site may be sandboxed. Do the following searches in google:
allinurl:your keywords
allintext:your keywords
allintitle:your keywords

If they all come up in the top 10, that's an indication that your site is sandboxed. Also, the absense of google referrals for competitive keywords is a sign. Percent of google referrals compared to yahoo/msn referalls is another indicator. But since it lasts around 6-9 months, you pretty much know. When it starts coming out, google traffic surges.

This is an amazing revelation to me. I have been out of the process for a while, but had noted some difficulty for a couple of collegueas (and a few sites I have worked on)having difficulty w/Google

So here's a question (I hope it does not repeat what is already in here): If I have a completely new website/new url - and using the test cases as shown above, it appears to rank well, is there any way of knowing if "eventually" the site will be taken out of the sandbox and into the regular results?

I've also read that "over-optimizing" your site can have negative effects - anyone have any opinions on this? Thanks in advance!

"Over-optimizing" is a vague term. But clearly if you stuff your pages with a too-high density of keywords it will backfire against you. Seen people talk about 1 word in 12 being safe etc.

Sounds like the sandbox works as follows from what I have read (but please correct me where incorrect):

When you first get picked up by google you do OK in the SERPS for maybe the first 2 weeks to a month.

You then disappear out the relevant results but still appear for obscure phrases, and your PR remains the same.

After anywhere between 3 to 9 months you get added back into the main SERP results and start smiling again.

There are theories that depending on "how" you got into the sandbox originally will determine how quick you escape. So if google picked you up originally via say DMOZ then you would hope to escape quicker?

Do we have an expression for the presumed extra weighting added to older sites? Opposite of the sandbox?

[ Message was edited by: scottll 01/18/2005 09:31 am ]

My newest site has been in the sandbox for about 11-12 months now, so the 3-9 month parameter doesn't always apply. I believe the reason for this is that my site is about a specific niche of real estate, and when other RE sites crosslinked with me, they owned framed DB sites, and put the text link or banner in the footer or navigation on every page in their site. Google saw hundreds of links come in during the first month. I was on the 1st page in the SERPS for at least 50 of my chosen keywords and phrases for about two weeks, then down the drain. I appear very high for obscure phrases that the site's not even optimized for. These phrases may be on a long page perhaps once, not in the title, not in bold or headers. Yahoo & MSN are currently each delivering more traffic than Google by about 6 to 1, when normally Google would beat them by about 2 to 1. They must've put a huge flag on my site. I wonder how long this one will be up. 2 years? Most of the sites linked to mine are managed by Realtors who are inexperienced with web sites, and only know how to make the changes they're allowed through their control panels. Guess I'll just wait, but this has really dampened my enthusiasm, so the site gets very little attention in comparison to my other sites. It would now be chock full of information with tons of relevant resources, but there's only so much time, and it's not worth putting into a "sandboxed" site. So here's yet another disadvantage to searchers looking for information...the site that would provide it can't afford to spend the time to put it together.

I am pushing the 9 month+ mark on a site - but I am guessing it is due to the competition for one or more terms. Still, I read another post in regards to inadvertantly (or purposely) linking to banned websites which can have a negative effect. I have to go through the backlinks and see if that is the case.
I personally don't feel it has to do with any "over-optimizing", but I agree that maybe my definition is overstated. Still, other material that I have worked on, with the same techniques, shows up well. The only difference is length of time online.

"I personally don't feel it has to do with any "over-optimizing","

If you do this, your pages will probably act exactly as if they were sandboxed, with the addition of possibly carrying an additional penalty flag of some sort that may never go away, which would make sense, only seos as a rule over optimize.

Re: I found a great site that blah blah...

that's forum spam. If it's not, please tell us the exact methods they used to get you out, I'm fascinated.

"If you do this, your pages will probably act exactly as if they were sandboxed, with the addition of possibly carrying an additional penalty flag of some sort that may never go away"

Not certain that I understand what you are saying - meaning if I am over-optimizing, I would be penalized?

Yes, absolutely, definitely, 100% for sure. I did this on purpose on a site to test this, yes, you will get penalized, and the page may never recover to its old position in the serps, assuming it was positioned, and if it's currently in the sandbox, it may never assume its natural position. Do not over optimize, do not link to bad spammy sites, do not use cloaking or other fun techniques unless you are absolutely certain that you understand the risks and benefits of using such techniques.

I think I will be alright - but did remove some material that may be considered redundant (title properties in text links?). I need more content anyways - and that probably is factoring in as well (in regards to keyword positioning). My usual MO has been that if I was doing anything specifically for the SE's and not for the visitor, than it wasn't worth doing, however recently, I have been balancing that with the mindset of "it won't hurt to have it...". I think I am going to stick with the original thought process. Thanks for the input!

[ Message was edited by: dedmond29 01/20/2005 06:10 pm ]

Can anyone give me some advice?

I have a non-comercial site where everything was indexed and I was doing nicely in Google. It was about 2 or 3 years old.

Some time ago pages started dropping out of cache. The index page is continuously in cache and is regularly indexed by Google. Other pages are slowly disappearing.

This leads me to believe that my site is not blackballed in any way.

When I say pages are disappearing out of cache, I mean that the site:domain.com command shows a list of URLS without cache for the most part.

It seems that most of my disappearing pages are over-optimised as far as Google is likely to see them.

I updated the WHOLE site not so long ago (adding information to all the footers) and I've just noticed yet another page disappearing.

I don't know if this is in any way linked to the Sandbox, but the best theory I can come up with is this:

If a site is updated recently it comes under Google's new, nasty algo. Old pages that were 'safe' are left just as they are, but even minor updates flag that a page is 'new', and that someone is tweaking the page, presumably for the purposes of SEO.

If the page trips a filter that shows it to be 'over optimised' it's out. Many of my pages appear that way.

"If a site is updated recently it comes under Google's new, nasty algo. Old pages that were 'safe' are left just as they are, but even minor updates flag that a page is 'new', and that someone is tweaking the page, presumably for the purposes of SEO. "

If this is the case, then that would cause the web to remain static with stale information. I had a similar experience when I changed the footer to point to some pages that are seasonally important and should be more easily accessible during certain times. Those pages immediately dropped (about a week) from #1 in the SERPs to about #40. I believe this will eventually characterize Google as "old news" with outdated results. One thing I've always noticed is that treating SEO's and webmasters poorly results in a degradation of the search engine itself. After all, you have to consider who presents most of the content on the web...webmasters. Just like search engines punish spammers, webmasters eventually abandon search engines that are so inconsistent they're impossible to work with. Better off with those that change in small increments than those that drop the hammer without warning.

And here's the nastiest secret of them all: the current google stuff, even accepting that it's made to cut spam, can only be manipulated by expert seos, with access to significant resources. Which means basically that despite anything google claims, they are making their last year of new site results point more and more to expertly seo'ed sites, since almost no amateur can hope to crack the system enough to get their new site ranked. This is just one of many things that makes the entire 'spam' argument a total joke in my opinion.

SEO guy, if you're overoptimizing your pages, I think what may be happening is that google is pulling those pages out of their main index and throwing them into the junk/penalty/sandbox index. Not a good move.

Thanks for the quick replies. Am I right therefore in thinking that YOU think I'm not so far off - that this is the reason my pages are disappearing every time I update, that the sandbox (as Lizardz so eloquently put it) is maybe receiving my over-optimised pages ?


I have to say it's not a hard and fast rule - the index, for example, and some pages that aren't 'over-optimised,; still have cache and therefore appear in the index and therefore in the SERPS

From loving Google I'm starting to have contempt for them. If these results reflect the way other sites are being treated then it's extremely ham-fisted. Yahoo /MSN are giving me good traffic. In a few months time if Google keeps on like this it'll be totally irrelevant.

But there might be some other explanation.

If there's not, then the lesson is get subtle in the optimisation, and once you've chucked a page up, for the love of God leave it as it is.

What about php pages? Dynamic, from a database - I wonder if they're treated in the same way... just a thought.

If it's true that re-optimizing a page will put you in the sandbox, or get you penalized, then what do you do when you want to aim for different keywords? Create a new page instead? On several sites I maintain, the main pages are changed all the time and re-optimized for the new material. It wouldn't make sense to create a whole new page in my situation where I'd be changing featured real estate listings on a page about condos in a particular town, and of course using new terms that searchers would use to find the listing. I haven't seen any of these disappear from the SERPs, and I do optimize to include the new content. So, I'm not sure that optimizing an existing page raises a penalty.
I did, however, have a backlist of link exchange requests some time ago, and decided to add many of them at a point when I had time. I noticed some lost positioning in many areas of the site shortly after. This is a nine-year-old site, so they may be slightly sandboxing when you add too many link exchanges at once. Consequently, from now on I'll only add high quality links that will deliver traffic, and forget about G, their PR, and the whole link exchange madness.

The term sandbox only applies to new sites, currently as of february 2004 I think. From what I've seen, if you are having problems with a domain older than this you want to look elsewhere for explanations.

One reason I like this forum is that I get to see so many seo errors, most sites I've checked when asked have been doing something bad, my favorite by far was when a guy way spammed his pages, because 'all his friends were doing it', then of course his site got penalized. Don't do optimization if you haven't read a great deal about it, and have a fair idea of what triggers penalties in google or yahoo.

If you don't have this understanding, it's almost certain that the techniques you use will backfire severely, I speak from experience when I say this. And if the technique seems too good to be true, and is not currently being penalized, it will be in the next algo update, and your site will be dead. Be careful. Don't leave signatures that are easily detectable by search engines.

Check your sites with a text only browser like lynx, half the errors and spamming I have found here were hard to see even looking at the source code, but were intantly recognizable when using the spider eye view of your page that lynx gives you.

Re php pages. The main difference is how the page is cached, it will not return the right last modified date, but rather returns the current page generation time, so it's a fresh page to googlebot on every visit, at least as far as the last modified date is concerned.

I'm about to do an experiment on this however, I have a sneaking suspicion that when google asked webmasters to set last modified headers to help googlebot that the story is a little bit more complicated than that.

<So, I'm not sure that optimizing an existing page raises a penalty. >

I agree, it doesn't make too much sense. The way I see it, most of my pages are severely overoptimised rather than just optimisied, simply because I never thought about it - no subtlty in them at all. So I'll try subtle optimisation, and see if that works.

To Google, I would guess that these pages look spammy.

One other thing - I have a page that was deleted about a year ago that Google shows up in its list of URLS - in fact, this page is cached too. No links to it from my site, my referral logs show no one's linking to it, the page doesn't exist on the server and following the URL from Google SERPS gives an error message. But Google thinks it's there, or rather, is quite happy to give metraffic.

In other words, I deleted a page but Google doesn't care, as far as it's conceerned it still exists, and I still get traffic from search engines that must use the Google results. Right to an error page that says that page doesn't exist.

I don't know. My site (see profile) is pretty good as a test bed as it's not your average pages, only a few words, it's easy to see if they are 'over-optimised'. Seems to me Google doesn't like you deleting pages. It wants the Webmaster to put a page up, keep it there, and it doesn't want it to look the remotest spammy. If any of the other search engines decide to go the same way, I'm done for! (Joke)

When I start seeing traffic to deleded pages, I set up a 301 for that group of pages, no reason to lose the page rank etc I might get for that. I've seen the same thing, pages gone for a year or more still indexed. I think this may stop one day when somebody wins a copywrite lawsuite over this. But the way I figure it, if that page still ranks, why lose the potential traffic? Just shoot it to a default page for the section or just the homepage.

a sandbox does not care if you have many links or not
it is part of the algorihm
lets close this issue and wait for google to resolve it
This sucks, but you know what...there are other search engines out there!!