New Sites and The Google "Dance/Shuffle"

A new site may get indexed relatively quickly (a few days); and actually rank fairly well. However, this is usually short lived until google figures out the true value of the site. It really depends on the amount of link building, content creation, and many other factors. But a site may not stop dancing around for 3 or 4 months. Then if you continue to promote, you should begin to see a more steady increase in rankings.

I've seen my new sites do the dance/shuffle for all kinds of different times. Smaller, less competitive niches seem to settle faster than if you're going after a bigger, more competitive one. That's with all things being equal (about the same size site, roughly the same amount of link building early on, etc.). The thing you don't want to do is get too ancy and start piling up the inbound links right out of the chute. Go slow, work on making the content better and/or adding more pages to tide you over. Force yourself not to use any kind of automated mega-link software on that new site. My own timeframe tends to be 3-4 months, as the poster above me commented. Most sites will settle into a fairly consistent SERP location, which is my cue to start ramping up the link building.

On a related note, I've noticed that if you submit articles to places like EZA with links to your site in the author box, there doesn't seem to be a limit even with brand new sites. What I mean is, it doesn't appear to trip the Google sandbox or TrustRank filter or whatever you want to call it. Others may have different experiences, but I've gone to town on some brand new sites in the past with lots of articles submitted to EZA, and it's as though I didn't do a bunch of early link building in Google's eyes. No sandbox. Pretty much everything else I've done as far as early link building - if it was too much - did put that site in the quicksand. For what it's worth.

John

i think sites are always shuffling, even years after the pages are made

use this tool to track the important pages

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker / Keyword Ranking Tool / SEO Rank : Search Engine Position Analysis Report

you can watch a site stay the same for months and then bamn it jumps to the top twenty or the other way around.

I think the "bump" for new sites or whatever is google just trying to place new things a bit higher in the search, if they didn't you'd search for a hurricane and they'd only show old listings and not the new stuff, usually lasts a month or two