Am I Sandboxed, or what? I'm stumped!

[Ian Varnava]

Hi Warriors,

Let me preface by saying that I do have a good amount of SEO experience and I've never been a big believer in the "sandbox" or "building links too fast is bad for you", etc.

Also, this hasn't been an income killer for me or anything, I have a lot more websites, but I'd just like to get your opinions on this.

About 2 months ago I made a very tight website around a low competition keyword in the Easter niche. Within a couple of weeks, it was on first page with just a little bit of link-building.

About a month ago it got to #3 spot and stayed there since. The link building I did was a few links in sidebars of PR3-5 blogs, a few hundred blog comments, and some small steady backlinks with The Link Juicer.

So, all was fine and dandy, I was making a little bit of money from it everyday.

About a week ago, I ordered some "SE-Nuke 10k linkwheel blast" on Fiverr. This caused an influx of low-quality links to be all over the net for this particular website.

Then, about 2-3 days after the link blast, my site completely disappeared from even the first 300 results on Google for any keyword. It did not get deindexed, but just disappeared from any decent rankings.

I've always done link blasts to all kinds of website, and never suffered any negative effects from them, so I don't even know if the link blast had anything to do it with, or it was something else?

Another thing, my best link for this website was in a sidebar of a news website... which displays "recent comments" and they show in the sidebar. The site is a PR6 news website, however doesn't seem to get much comments so 1 link can stay there for a while before it falls off due to newer comments showing. I noticed that link had fallen off the sidebar on that site, so I just commented again to get it back, I'll see if that has any effect once the effects of that update in Google. If that's the case, then it's kind of sad that out of hundreds of links, only that one link counts for anything with G...lol.

The above website has been an experiment of sorts anyway, so I don't necessarily care if it comes back or not, however I do want to figure out WHY it fell since it is a high-quality website, and was being treated by Google as such.

What are your thoughts on this? I'll PM you guys the URL if you want to get a closer look at it.

Thanks!

[iAmNameLess]

I don't think you are sandboxed.... you shouldn't have ordered the 10K links if you would be concerned about dancing. That is all you're doing in my opinion. Not all the links will be indexed, and they won't be indexed at the same time. I think you will come back in the #2 or #1 spot. Every time I add a bunch of links to a site, and it isn't ranked #1, it will dance around a bit.

Another good possibility, is that some of the blog comments that might have been indexed, were removed.

When a link is removed, that isn't good!

[Ian Varnava]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

I don't think you are sandboxed.... you shouldn't have ordered the 10K links if you would be concerned about dancing. That is all you're doing in my opinion. Not all the links will be indexed, and they won't be indexed at the same time. I think you will come back in the #2 or #1 spot. Every time I add a bunch of links to a site, and it isn't ranked #1, it will dance around a bit.

Another good possibility, is that some of the blog comments that might have been indexed, were removed.

When a link is removed, that isn't good!

Thanks iAmNameLess, I figured it may be a dance, but for some reason out of the 100's of websites I've built over the past few years, I've never experienced a "dance" so strong where I completely fell off. I went from page 1 to page 10 many times, and came back in the same spot or stronger after a while... but never from number 3 to number 400. That's the main reason I'm trying to figure out why... only time will tell I guess.

EDIT: Links for the site are intact except for the one that I mentioned, which I got back.

[jacked]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

I don't think you are sandboxed.... you shouldn't have ordered the 10K links if you would be concerned about dancing. That is all you're doing in my opinion. Not all the links will be indexed, and they won't be indexed at the same time. I think you will come back in the #2 or #1 spot. Every time I add a bunch of links to a site, and it isn't ranked #1, it will dance around a bit.

Another good possibility, is that some of the blog comments that might have been indexed, were removed.

When a link is removed, that isn't good!

Try waiting a week or two and see if it comes back. This has happened to me a few times when doing 10k and higher links. Usually comes back higher within a day or two or up to a week.

[Mike Grant]

1,249 views and 3 replies? wtf lol.

[SEOexpertSEO]

Hey Ian,

About of month ago Google did an update that affected a lot of websites that used article marketing. Sites like Squidoo got heavily penalized too.

Here is a tool that allows you to check if your website has been sandboxed:
Google Sandbox checker Tool,Sandbox checker Google Sandbox Checker Tool

Also Ian, I sent you a message about Link Building. I would like to know what tools or services you have had success with.

[dadamson]

Yeah this happens to me often. Usually when I blast a new domain.

I can usually get the site back up with better rankings in under 24hrs by throwing a bunch of social bookmarking backlinks on a consistent basis with unique descriptions, timed submissions, etc. - Make it look viral rather than spammed.

[Ian Varnava]

Originally Posted by jacked

Try waiting a week or two and see if it comes back. This has happened to me a few times when doing 10k and higher links. Usually comes back higher within a day or two or up to a week.

Yup I guess I will just have to wait. Now that I think about it, I never really did that many links to a brand new domain before, which is why I probably never experienced this bad of a dance. They've always been at least 1 year or older.

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

1,249 views and 3 replies? wtf lol.

Lol wow I didn't even notice. I guess either my post wasn't interesting enough or Warriors have gotten lazy.

Originally Posted by SEOexpertSEO

Hey Ian,

About of month ago Google did an update that affected a lot of websites that used article marketing. Sites like Squidoo got heavily penalized too.

Also Ian, I sent you a message about Link Building. I would like to know what tools or services you have had success with.

Yes, I'm well aware of Panda and the other recent Google algo changes. However this is not the type of site to be affected by it. It doesn't deal with dup/scraped/bs content or anything like that. It's actually a very high quality website on-target to deliver a premium experience for visitors searching for that particular key phrase. Also I haven't done any article marketing on this one.

Hey, I don't recall seeing a PM from you. The link-building tools and services I mainly use these days are The Link Juicer for link-building on auto-pilot (works OK for lower competition keywords in my experience, though a bit pricey at $47/month), and I use ScrapeBox for all kinds of experiments. I try to harvest lists of high PR blogs but then comment on them manually just by visiting them in my browser (not even the internal SB browser, it's kind of annoying). I find that you can harvest a nice list of high-quality high-PR pages to put your link on, but mess it all up by blasting them with the commenter using generic comments and not getting much links (unless they're autoapprove). But yet still, I do blasts for 1000's of links on some 'experimental' domains I have where I won't lose my hat if I lose my rankings or get deindexed from Google. Other than that there are some good link-building gigs on Fiverr, though most of them are trash. I've heard good things about Unique Article Wizard so that's next on my list to try one of these days. Other than that I just do random things to get links and see what works. I try not to miss an opportunity to comment on a nice page even if I'm reading it for my personal information (such as news sites). I've also been exploring some services which let you purchase contextual links on high PR pages, though the prices are a bit high ($100+ for 6 months), though I guess it depends what you're looking for... If I'm ranking for lower competition keywords I don't need all that. If I make a website about "make money online" then I might. As far as article marketing, I am a Platinum author on Ezine Articles but rarely do much article marketing anymore. I always found it to be kind of a turn-off, because those sites (even EZA) are full of so much garbage, mixed with the non-garbage of course. I know they're all learning their lessons recently with the Google algo updates.

If you want any more help or info just PM me and I'd be glad to.

Originally Posted by dadamson

Yeah this happens to me often. Usually when I blast a new domain.

I can usually get the site back up with better rankings in under 24hrs by throwing a bunch of social bookmarking backlinks on a consistent basis with unique descriptions, timed submissions, etc. - Make it look viral rather than spammed.

That's good advice on the social bookmarking. I think I know what to do with that. Thanks!

[0b1]

Hi Ian,

I'm currently experiencing the same thing too, I posted here

My site I believe is going trough Google dance: Is google Dance a good or a bad thing?

I sure do hope things return to normal, I was very happy since i gotten my first sale for that site and suddenly bam gone..from the SERPS. Do update us on your site, I'll update this post once that site of mine gets back

-Brandon

[Captain Dynamo]

Yup, my 3 month old site had the No. 3 spot on first page google when my site disappeared off the radar... this was about 2 weeks ago.

As usual I freaked the hell out!... I consulted Paul Easton (thanks Paul) who took one look at the site and "it's fine". I was also thinkin that i'd built too many links too fast but apparently thats the biggest myth in IM.

Sure enough within about 8 days (without doing anything) it was back at the same position. The last 2 days my sites been back on page 1, I've had better traffic than before the "sandbox".

Apparently as google changes their algros on a constant basis, new sites do get accidentally stuck in google "neverland" before getting picked up again.

Hang in there.

[GeraldGigerl]

How old are your sites? When I´m checking PR for my new sites for which Im currently building backlinks, sometimes the sites are ranked high on page 1 or two, and sometimes the sites are not found in the top 100 results.

This can be because your site is new, because of backlinks, how you build backlinks..

[BudgetSEO]

Originally Posted by Ian Varnava

Hi Warriors,

Let me preface by saying that I do have a good amount of SEO experience and I've never been a big believer in the "sandbox" or "building links too fast is bad for you", etc.

Also, this hasn't been an income killer for me or anything, I have a lot more websites, but I'd just like to get your opinions on this.

About 2 months ago I made a very tight website around a low competition keyword in the Easter niche. Within a couple of weeks, it was on first page with just a little bit of link-building.

About a month ago it got to #3 spot and stayed there since. The link building I did was a few links in sidebars of PR3-5 blogs, a few hundred blog comments, and some small steady backlinks with The Link Juicer.

So, all was fine and dandy, I was making a little bit of money from it everyday.

About a week ago, I ordered some "SE-Nuke 10k linkwheel blast" on Fiverr. This caused an influx of low-quality links to be all over the net for this particular website.

Then, about 2-3 days after the link blast, my site completely disappeared from even the first 300 results on Google for any keyword. It did not get deindexed, but just disappeared from any decent rankings.

I've always done link blasts to all kinds of website, and never suffered any negative effects from them, so I don't even know if the link blast had anything to do it with, or it was something else?

Another thing, my best link for this website was in a sidebar of a news website... which displays "recent comments" and they show in the sidebar. The site is a PR6 news website, however doesn't seem to get much comments so 1 link can stay there for a while before it falls off due to newer comments showing. I noticed that link had fallen off the sidebar on that site, so I just commented again to get it back, I'll see if that has any effect once the effects of that update in Google. If that's the case, then it's kind of sad that out of hundreds of links, only that one link counts for anything with G...lol.

The above website has been an experiment of sorts anyway, so I don't necessarily care if it comes back or not, however I do want to figure out WHY it fell since it is a high-quality website, and was being treated by Google as such.

What are your thoughts on this? I'll PM you guys the URL if you want to get a closer look at it.

Thanks!

There you go mate, trying to build backlinks the shady way.
Of course you can do that, if your site is completely 'disposeable' or i could say made to achieve a specific purpose until a time
Ex - want to be on page 1 till 5th April, not bothered after that.

[Ian Varnava]

Originally Posted by GeraldGigerl

How old are your sites? When I´m checking PR for my new sites for which Im currently building backlinks, sometimes the sites are ranked high on page 1 or two, and sometimes the sites are not found in the top 100 results.

This can be because your site is new, because of backlinks, how you build backlinks..

This site is only about 2 months old, so yes, I understand the age issue.

Originally Posted by BudgetSEO

There you go mate, trying to build backlinks the shady way.
Of course you can do that, if your site is completely 'disposeable' or i could say made to achieve a specific purpose until a time
Ex - want to be on page 1 till 5th April, not bothered after that.

Well, until 5th April may work for Easter, as people will probably slow down on ordering after that since they may not receive stuff in time. Lol

But in all seriousness, yes this site is 'disposable' you could say I guess. Like I said I was just trying different things on it, it doesn't effect my livelihood (thank God).

[Ian Varnava]

Here's an interesting tidbit... traffic on this website has dropped by over 80% since the Google 'dance' (it's still dancing, if it's ever going to come back up).

However, it is still getting some traffic mainly from Bing and Yahoo... the interesting part is that sales have maintained as far as dollars, conversions have went from 1.5% to over 10%, bounce rate has gone from about 50% to 33%, and page views have shot up as well.

It seems like the traffic from Bing and Yahoo is of much higher quality than Google's... interesting.

[Han Fan]

whenever you do profile links, you gonna experience dancing..

just build constant links it will come back out

Han

[jacked]

Ya, just keep up your linking consistently, and try getting some high quality Web 2.0 or Article Directory links, that may help you out.

[bhtex71]

Here is what you need to do according to Keith Baxter.

Keith says to get out of the sandbox if you in it. Submit your site to Google webmaster tools and also to Yahoo's version and Bing's version. I would submit to all 3 even though yahoo and bing are basically the same search engine now.

I had a site that I was using automated software on and building links to the home page too fast. Wham! I went from 1000 visitors per day down to 300. Ouch! Then Keith told me at an Epic Traffic Masters event in August to do just what I told you. I did and one week later it was like a Miracle...... It won't hurt to try it....

[dburk]

Hi Ian,

There seems to be no mystery here at all.

This sounds like the typical experience most new webmasters experience due to

QDF

.

There are dozens of posts just like yours every single month on this board. There is no Sandbox, you have experienced QDF, possibly combined with the loss of your most powerful backlink.