Does Google sand box exist?

[smolodoy]

Hello everyone, I was wondering if google sand box really exist? Have anyone really got sand boxed before or its just all rumors? I mean to a brand new site can do a senuke blast every other day without getting sandboxed? Thanks..

[edmltw]

You'll only know if your site is no longer indexed by Google.

Check it out on google by typing your exact URL in quotes.

Ed

[David Ogden]

Yes, there is a sandbox and from time to time websites will get caught in it and disappearing from search results for various periods of time before reappearing. Google does not penalize your for multiple submissions but other search engines do.

[halfpoint]

The sandbox is a myth made up by people who's sites aren't optimised as well as they could be. That, of course, is simply my opinion.

[NetWorth]

I don't believe that a "Sandbox" exist however do understand what google wants and doesn't want. They are the best search engine because people find the information that they want using google. No one goes looking for sales ads! So give google what they want and you will do well. Give them garbage and nothing but sales ads and they will eliminate you.

[Adam Roy]

Quality sites don't get sandboxed.

Sites with really high keyword densities, loads of external links, tons of typos and grammatical errors, or any other obvious signs of a low quality websites causes websites to be sandboxed.

I have never been sandboxed.

[Gary Becks]

OoooOOoohhh, The saaaannnboooxx is gonna get you!!!

Ok really, I don't subscribe to the theory of there being a "sandbox" for sites that build links very quickly. I do however think that there is an "evaluation box" and for smaller sites I have realized that sometimes less is actually more.

I know it sounds crazy but I have noticed that I can actually rank a site and hold rankings a lot easier by building less links. I guess it's kind of like "flying under the radar" so to speak.

After building lots of links google will have reason to take a look at your site to see what all of the fuss is about, while they are doing so they seem to put you off to the side or shuffle you around in the serps while trying to figure out where your site should actually rank. However, if you build links consistently your rankings will always eventually improve even if they do drop for a brief period...

Gary..

[bgmacaw]

Only try to realize the truth...

YouTube - The Matrix - Spoon (cro sub)

There is no sandbox...

[smolodoy]

yea thats what I thought too.. people just trying to slow down the competitors and get ahead of them themselfs by building more links in a certain period...

[inter123]

You will only face a permanent ban if there is something in the content that seriously violates the law, for e.g. extreme violence.

You could face google dance if for example backlinks are built too fast. In which you'd dissapear from the search results to the backwaters. But not to worry, you'll come back 3 months later (at the most) at the same position or better.

[joetheseo]

Sure the sandbox exists,

Ask yourself,


Do you have a new domain?


Did you spam 1000 links at once?


Were most of those links blog comments?


If you answer YES to any of these questions, you could be sandboxed.

But the secret is DON'T stop link building, that only makes you look MORE unnatural to Google

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by joecrupie

Sure the sandbox exists,

YouTube - Cargo Cult

[joetheseo]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

YouTube - Cargo Cult

You crack me up.

I admit that none of my sites have been "sandboxed" since I was a newbie IM'er first getting into SEO. So who knows, maybe it only exists for the newbs .

[Gary Becks]

Originally Posted by joecrupie

You crack me up.

I admit that none of my sites have been "sandboxed" since I was a newbie IM'er first getting into SEO. So who knows, maybe it only exists for the newbs .

Or may it just DOESN'T EXIST...

[HCLee]

Yes from my experience the sandbox does exist and it affects mostly new sites when I tried to do too much backlinking too soon. It gets more stabilized once your site is about 6 months old.

[hawaiidave]

Whether or not you call it the "sandbox", it does exist. I had a site de-indexed for what I can only imagine was my over-exuberant backlinking to that site - but it was later re-indexed...so no biggy.

[stern112]

If this is true--- why don't we all just blast all our competition with 100x Xrumer blasts, place them on link farms, etc.?

People say do not place a lot of links at once- again if true then why not blast our comp with links and crap sites??

[unknownpray]

Its not true i will agree with the above poster why not blast our competitor with links and crap sites? Its a big question!

[Zeb]

Let me tell you personally that the dreaded sandbox does exist. I tried running an experiment by driving about 100 links to my site a day and true to that matter, it disappeared!

Prior to this, my site was ranked first page for a couple of terms. A costly experiment on my side. However, it came back after a couple of weeks, but i got help by driving a few quality links to the site.

So moral of the story is to not suddenly build links aggressively. And if you happen to get sandboxed, keep on building links to it but no aggression.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by hawaiidave

Whether or not you call it the "sandbox", it does exist. I had a site de-indexed for what I can only imagine was my over-exuberant backlinking to that site - but it was later re-indexed...so no biggy.

Then the sandbox doesn't exist, does it? You got de-indexed, not sandboxed.

If I was de-indexed, that would be a biggy.

If you think building backlinks fast is bad, you have never heard of
the world, "viral."

If do really stupid things, you will get de-indexed.

Let me quote the powers that be here at the warriorforum:

What's the sandbox?

The disappointment webmasters feel when Google's stupid algorithms don't appreciate their site. It can't be them so it must be Google's fault.

Paul

[dburk]

It seems the Google Sandbox myth will never die! The so called "Google Sandbox" is purely a mental construct that webmasters tend to imagine they have been placed in when their rankings drop.

To be fair there is something known as the "Sandbox Effect" that was so dubbed after Matt Cutts admitted there is an observable 'effect' of Google's algorithm that might be perceived as the cause of what many were describing as the "Google Sandbox".

About 7 years ago Google added Trust factors to their algorithm that gives added weight to web pages that have stood the test of time. If a page had been around for years it could be "trusted" as a permanent document. These more reliable documents will rank sightly higher than an equally relevant document.

But, this change brought about another issue, new fresher information was made harder to find, so they implemented a freshness factor (QDF - Query Deserves Freshness) to boost the newest pages towards the top of the ranks for a brief period of time.

This freshness factor seems to fool new webmasters into believing that they have somehow earned this higher ranking and they are baffled once the freshness factor wears off. The so called "Google Sandbox" is often invoked as the likely culprit. It never seems to cross their minds that they haven't legitimately earned those higher rankings.

[ExpertMkt]

YES, MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW THEIR GUIDLINES!!!!!

[jacksonlin]

If you make enough sites you'll realize sometimes some new ranks rank well and easily and sometimes some of them don't.

So I believe the ones that don't are in the sandbox.

That's my opinion of these, from personal experience. So no, it's not a myth for me.

Oh boy I wish it were only a myth!

[dburk]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

If you make enough sites you'll realize sometimes some new ranks rank well and easily and sometimes some of them don't.

So I believe the ones that don't are in the sandbox.

That's my opinion of these, from personal experience. So no, it's not a myth for me.

Oh boy I wish it were only a myth!

Hi jacksonlin,

So you think different levels of competition has nothing to do with your varying results?

For me at least, I had perceived these different results as different levels of competition, i.e. low competition is easier to rank than higher competition. Who knew that it wasn't different levels of competition, but mean o' Google punishing me with their "Sandbox". Thanks for straighten me out on this.

[ltgreenenergy]

Originally Posted by smolodoy

Hello everyone, I was wondering if google sand box really exist? Have anyone really got sand boxed before or its just all rumors? I mean to a brand new site can do a senuke blast every other day without getting sandboxed? Thanks..

There are many arguments regarding this. If Sandbox really exist.The only way to know if this is existing is to experience it. You wont believe until you have experienced the Sandbox.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by ltgreenenergy

There are many arguments regarding this. If Sandbox really exist.The only way to know if this is existing is to experience it. You wont believe until you have experienced the Sandbox.

Hi ltgreenenergy,

So how does one recognize this "Sandbox"? How will I know it's the so called "Sandbox" and not just stiff competition?

If you have some insight on that then please enlighten me!

[Tom Goodwin]

Don,

As much as I might disagree with you on certain topics, i'm with you on this. This thread is getting really silly.

Sometimes sites perform better than others, as it boils down to competition and how much SEO work you put into your own site. Sometimes the competition might be harder than you might think, as there might be a 301 redirect involved or more subtle differences that you didn't notice when analyzing the competition.

To conclude that a "sandbox" exists merely because some of one's sites don't perform as well as others in the SERPs, is just silly. This mythical "sandbox" is like the boogeyman that people like to throw out every time they don't get onto Google's 1st page.

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi ltgreenenergy,

So how does one recognize this "Sandbox"? How will I know it's the so called "Sandbox" and not just stiff competition?

If you have some insight on that then please enlighten me!

[jacksonlin]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi jacksonlin,

So you think different levels of competition has nothing to do with your varying results?

For me at least, I had perceived these different results as different levels of competition, i.e. low competition is easier to rank than higher competition. Who knew that it wasn't different levels of competition, but mean o' Google punishing me with their "Sandbox". Thanks for straighten me out on this.

Sure, there are different levels of competition, but I'm talking about having NO rankings in the top 1000, even though the site has been indexed and has backlinks drink built everyday, for the past 4 months.

If you don't believe me, just go and make a **** load of sites (I have more than 100). Then you'll find out sometimes, interestingly, a few sites rank well quickly and others rank REALLY SLOW even though they follow similar drip fed linking patterns.

All my sites have perfect on page optimization as well.

That's why I believe there's a sandbox!

Get penalized and learn the hard way like I did! =]

[Zeb]

What do you call if something like this happens to you :-

- Your site has been ranking well (position 1-6 page 1) for the last couple of months
- One day you decide to experiment and try to push the site up the serps by sending in 100s of backlinks (combo of web2.0, linkwheels, angelas, blogs) per day (big mistake btw )
- next thing you know, your site is no longer in page 1. Not even in the top 100 rankings as searched by MS's rank tracker
- however your site is listed in google still cause you do a search for site:yoursite.com and it shows up. It's just not ranked as well as it used to be, or simply vanished for the keyword term you were targeting.

Is it the sandbox? it's definitely not banned cause it still shows up when you do a site: search. Call it whatever you want. Sandbox...penalty...etc but it does happen. It happened to me personally.

What i did to get my site back in the serps is to keep on building (quality) backlinks to my site and sometime after a month, it came back (thankfully!).

Believe what you want. I know what happened to my site and i consider it an experiment that i won't do again. At least i know what i shouldn't be doing next time from my personal experience. Smart men learn from their own mistakes, wise men learn from other peoples mistakes...

[jacksonlin]

Originally Posted by Zeb

What do you call if something like this happens to you :-

- Your site has been ranking well (position 1-6 page 1) for the last couple of months
- One day you decide to experiment and try to push the site up the serps by sending in 100s of backlinks (combo of web2.0, linkwheels, angelas, blogs) per day (big mistake btw )
- next thing you know, your site is no longer in page 1. Not even in the top 100 rankings as searched by MS's rank tracker
- however your site is listed in google still cause you do a search for site:yoursite.com and it shows up. It's just not ranked as well as it used to be, or simply vanished for the keyword term you were targeting.

Is it the sandbox? it's definitely not banned cause it still shows up when you do a site: search. Call it whatever you want. Sandbox...penalty...etc but it does happen. It happened to me personally.

What i did to get my site back in the serps is to keep on building (quality) backlinks to my site and sometime after a month, it came back (thankfully!).

Believe what you want. I know what happened to my site and i consider it an experiment that i won't do again. At least i know what i shouldn't be doing next time from my personal experience. Smart men learn from their own mistakes, wise men learn from other peoples mistakes...

How many links did you throw at it in one day?

1000?
2000?
5000?

And how many did you normally build a day prior to that and for how long?

[Social-Media-Marketing]

Matt Cutts from Google said at Pubcon year before last that there is no sandbox per say. He said in some industries it might "appear" that there is such a thing, but it is just how their algorithm works for those "special" industries that gives the illusion of a sandbox.

[Zeb]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

How many links did you throw at it in one day?

1000?
2000?
5000?

And how many did you normally build a day prior to that and for how long?

I threw in about 100-150 links per day for a couple of days prior to the penalty happening. Before that i was building links at an average of 10 per day for the past 2-3 months.

Guess google disliked the sudden surge of links to my site and gave me a nice pat on the back.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

Sure, there are different levels of competition, but I'm talking about having NO rankings in the top 1000, even though the site has been indexed and has backlinks drink built everyday, for the past 4 months.

If you don't believe me, just go and make a **** load of sites (I have more than 100). Then you'll find out sometimes, interestingly, a few sites rank well quickly and others rank REALLY SLOW even though they follow similar drip fed linking patterns.

If you think that's a lot of sites then you have another thing coming. I made more sites than that in just the month of March.

Some sites rank faster than others, and that's just the nature of the beast, and has nothing to do with any sort of "sandbox." Sometimes as Google's algo absorbs links, sites bounce around (sometimes unbelievably drastically), but it is just the natural process of the link absorption. For some of my newer sites (i.e., less than 6 weeks old), I usually average about 3000 links/month lately (with same individual days hitting 1000 links per domain). Sometimes they bounce around, sometimes they don't. But, in every single case they end up ranking well.

Edit: One thing I forgot to add. One of the biggest mistakes IMers make it seems, is that if their site does move back or whatever, they stop backlinking. They got all scared or whatever, and stop cold turkey and their link velocity goes to pot. Instead of stopping, you need to continue on your backlinking journey.

Tom

[dburk]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

Sure, there are different levels of competition, but I'm talking about having NO rankings in the top 1000, even though the site has been indexed and has backlinks drink built everyday, for the past 4 months.

If you don't believe me, just go and make a **** load of sites (I have more than 100). Then you'll find out sometimes, interestingly, a few sites rank well quickly and others rank REALLY SLOW even though they follow similar drip fed linking patterns.

All my sites have perfect on page optimization as well.

That's why I believe there's a sandbox!

Get penalized and learn the hard way like I did!

Hi jacksonlin,

I have launched many websites, in the thousands, and have never experienced exactly what you described.

Once I get a site indexed it always ranks highly for something, if only an obscure and unique phrase. If it were penalized how could those keywords rank on the first page of SERP?

What you seem to be saying is that you feel you are penalized, not for a specific keyword, but for all keywords. I have yet to see a website that was indexed and couldn't rank well for any keyword at all (unless there was a technical reason i.e. 302 redirect). I would be very interested in seeing such an example. If anyone reading this thread has come across such an example that is still in existence, please share!

The bottom line is that if you rank highly for some keywords and not as high for others it isn't a penalty on your website, it must be keyword competition. You don't get into the top 1000 results unless you have exceeded every other document that has been optimized for that keyword. Not being included in the top 1000 is not evidence that you have been sandboxed, it suggests that you haven't yet earned that ranking.

Now if your page is indexed and you don't rank for any keyword, even phrases unique to your web page, I would believe that you have been penalized. I have heard many a folk make such a claim but it never turned out to be true. I have seen entire websites de-indexed but never penalized while still indexed. If you can provide a single example I think we could all learn from it.

[khtm]

Originally Posted by paulgl

If you think building backlinks fast is bad, you have never heard of the world, "viral."

Nail. Head.

[jacksonlin]

dburk,

Great!

I'm just looking for someone to do some diagnostics on my sites!

I'll send you a PM and I'll show you what I'm talking about.

Having said that, I'm still a firm believer of the sandbox unless I am PROVEN otherwise.

Because from my personal experience, there is a sandbox!

=]

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Zeb

I threw in about 100-150 links per day for a couple of days prior to the penalty happening.

That is nothing.

True spammers will do thousands a day with XRummer. Unless it's a niche closely watched manually by the Google spam team, like male enhancement or dieting, no penalty is likely. (What was your general, not specific, niche, BTW?)

Sites that go viral or have support from a related authority sites will gain 1000's of links very quickly. No penalty or sandbox there either.

Sites with low quality backlinks (aka profile links), devalued links and no authority links will tend to drop dramatically after the original QDF phase or when links are lost or devalued.

The key is quality links, preferably contextual (aka editorial) links from a related authority site.

[imseo]

Yes it exists, I was in it for 5 weeks (got no Google traffic at all), then one day I was "released" and my traffic came back instantly.

After making some design changes I got put back in and again had to wait weeks to come out.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by dburk

Now if your page is indexed and you don't rank for any keyword, even phrases unique to your web page, I would believe that you have been penalized. I have heard many a folk make such a claim but it never turned out to be true. I have seen entire websites de-indexed but never penalized while still indexed. If you can provide a single example I think we could all learn from it.

I've seen this happen a few times and it's obviously a manual penalty being applied to a site. It happened to some popular bloggers and to real estate sites a couple of years ago. If you want to see it happen, start a popular Internet Marketing and/or SEO blog and say a lot of stuff that annoys the web spam team at Google. BAM! You won't even rank for your own name.

Most algorithmic site scoring appears to be positive, not negative. I like to think of it as a long series of on/off switches and the more you're able to get to the 'on' position the higher you'll rank.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Social-Media-Marketing

Matt Cutts from Google said at Pubcon year before last that there is no sandbox per say. He said in some industries it might "appear" that there is such a thing, but it is just how their algorithm works for those "special" industries that gives the illusion of a sandbox.

Pro Tip:

Matt Cutts works for Google.

Cutts' videos, words, etc. are not for the webmaster's benefit. It is for Google's benefit.

If you took everything he said literally, you'd be up ****'s creek.

Remember, he has a motive, and it's to keep everyone guessing.

Just because he said there is no "sandbox" doesn't mean there isn't a penalty.

[Zeb]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

That is nothing.

True spammers will do thousands a day with XRummer. Unless it's a niche closely watched manually by the Google spam team, like male enhancement or dieting, no penalty is likely. (What was your general, not specific, niche, BTW?)

Sites that go viral or have support from a related authority sites will gain 1000's of links very quickly. No penalty or sandbox there either.

Sites with low quality backlinks (aka profile links), devalued links and no authority links will tend to drop dramatically after the original QDF phase or when links are lost or devalued.

The key is quality links, preferably contextual (aka editorial) links from a related authority site.

I think the one factor that contributed to penalization is inconsistent links. Prior to this, i was building links at a slow and steady pace at approx. 10 per day (quality links from pr1-4 blogs). Nice and easy. I was happy and google was happy and gave me a good serp.

Then i suddenly threw in approx. 100s of links (added in a bunch of web2.0 links) for 2-3 days. I guess that upset google and they decided to give me a lesson by penalizing me.

It was in the fitness niche. Don't know if that had anything to do with it though.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Zeb

I think the one factor that contributed to penalization is inconsistent links.

It's not a penalty, it's a score. If one sports team scores more than the opposing team, the opposing team doesn't get a penalty. They just don't get points.

Once again, we're talking about too few links to even have an impact on search rank scoring, especially not an immediate one.

Oh, and Google is a software algorithm (for the most part), you don't make it happy or angry, it's code, not artificial intelligence.

[khtm]

Yeah Zeb I agree with bgmacaw. I think you're looking for something to blame for whatever it is you think happened, when you don't know all the variables.

As other people said, there's marketers that create 10s of thousands of links per day and have never been "sandboxed". Plus, what do you think happens when something goes viral (maybe from being featured on Digg)? That's most definitely inconsistent backlinking, but those pages don't get "sandboxed".

Other things to consider:

• How do you know what your competitors were doing in their SEO campaigns during the time you thought you were "sandboxed"? Their efforts directly affect your results.
• Did you PING all your Web 2.0 profiles after creating them? If not, there's no way Google would have crawled them all in 2-3 days.
• Did any of the content (on-page SEO) on your site change during this period? This can have a huge impact on SERPs.

[RobinC]

The Sandbox as I understand it is being relegated to Google's supplemental listings.

This is when not all of your pages get crawled regularly or ranked for keywords.

There is a great post about it on Jim Boykin's blog. Would post a link but don't have enough posts yet. Lol

[Zeb]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

It's not a penalty, it's a score. If one sports team scores more than the opposing team, the opposing team doesn't get a penalty. They just don't get points.

Once again, we're talking about too few links to even have an impact on search rank scoring, especially not an immediate one.

Oh, and Google is a software algorithm (for the most part), you don't make it happy or angry, it's code, not artificial intelligence.

Yup i know google doesn't get happy or angry. I'm just putting it in layman terms

Read a few posts above where i posted what happened to my site and how i got out of it.

It wasn't on a new site, it was on a site that was about 6 months old.

[RobinC]

Ok, now I can post this link:

Jim Boykin's Link Building Blog

Worth the read...

[Zeb]

Originally Posted by khtm

Yeah Zeb I agree with bgmacaw. I think you're looking for something to blame for whatever it is you think happened, when you don't know all the variables.

As other people said, there's marketers that create 10s of thousands of links per day and have never been "sandboxed". Plus, what do you think happens when something goes viral (maybe from being featured on Digg)? That's most definitely inconsistent backlinking, but those pages don't get "sandboxed".

Other things to consider:

• How do you know what your competitors were doing in their SEO campaigns during the time you thought you were "sandboxed"? Their efforts directly affect your results.
• Did you PING all your Web 2.0 profiles after creating them? If not, there's no way Google would have crawled them all in 2-3 days.
• Did any of the content (on-page SEO) on your site change during this period? This can have a huge impact on SERPs.

Hey you're entitled to your own opinion mate

I was sharing what happened to my site when i suddenly drove 100s of links to it one day. Previously i was constantly driving links at 10 per day, then i went in overdrive and upped that by 1000% (100s) of links per day. The penalization was not instant of course. But probably less than a week after implementing link overdrive. Did nothing to my on page seo factors etc..only external seo.

I'm saying that could be one of the causes of getting penalized. A sudden surge of links. I know that some sites can handle this such as cnn or some huge site but i'm not cnn lol. btw my site was about 6 months old if not longer.

Can't say about what others did by driving 1000s of links and not getting a penalty. This has not been my case, so i'm just sharing with you all what happened to my site and how i got out of it.

If you drive 1000s of links and come out okay, good for you mate but i won't be doing this and i've learned my lesson

Not blaming google or anyone here mate. Just sharing from my past experiences/experiment.

Oh and yea, i did get my site ranked back in after some time (close to a month), so it's all good now...

[Underground SEO]

without a shadow of doubt the sandbox exists. I've experienced it before for a short amount of time on one of my sites! Not a good situation to be in.