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Has My Site Been Sandboxed?

by coreytucker
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

I have been working on a new site thats about 3 weeks old now. I have added about 14 pages of content to the site and have "digged" about 10 of the 14 pages.

All was going well until today. I was getting about 10-20 uniques per day and growing as I add content. I have around 36 more pages that I have written and plan to add 2 new pages daily to the site.

However I checked my stats today and see I have 0 visitors, and when I check for some of the keywords I ranked on the first page my pages are nowhere to be found.

All I have done for backlinks is use digg.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and hubpages. Last night I added two more content pages to my site and dugg one of them.

Now it seems this could have triggered the sandbox placement? I have only built perhaps 25 backlinks total since ive built the site. The process has been erratic with some days being alot higher then others and other days having none at all. I also went through a perios of about 10 days when I built no backlinks at all.

I will say that I have more digg backlinks and ezinearticle backlinks than anything else. Im just wondering if something like this can happen for only a few days then your site and pages are all indexed where they use to be?

Its really discouraging to see this happen as I have been careful not to build too many backlinks. I was seeing success to with indiviual pages in my site ranking well and bringing traffic.

Any ever had this happen and then it return to normal within days to weeks? Thanks
#sandboxed #site
  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    3 weeks old is not enough time to make any judgements. Some google datacenters will have different information than others too, so you will likely see changing results. Just have a good solid plan and take your time.
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  • Profile picture of the author doc_web
    I am not sure if sandbox exist. Google rankings are so fluid now that one of my sites keep changing its postion for its keywords through out the day.

    Build a few more links and maybe not from digg or other bookmarking sites and your site will comeback.

    Goodluck
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    • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
      Originally Posted by doc_web View Post

      I am not sure if sandbox exist. Google rankings are so fluid now that one of my sites keep changing its postion for its keywords through out the day.

      Build a few more links and maybe not from digg or other bookmarking sites and your site will comeback.

      Goodluck
      In my experience it definately exists in some way, shape or form, but I never seem to get the consistently same results.

      I've tested a brand new domain, getting about 1000 backlinks to it in a matter of weeks, and it didn't seem to get sandboxed, but on another site a relatively small number of links seemed to trigger a temporary sandbox.

      It is normal from time to time to see your website drop out of the search engine rankings for 24, 48 hours or more, and then come back.

      So I would just continue building the site for now, and see what it looks like in a few days time.

      Cheers


      Tim
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by tim_buchalka View Post

        In my experience it definately exists in some way, shape or form, but I never seem to get the consistently same results.

        I've tested a brand new domain, getting about 1000 backlinks to it in a matter of weeks, and it didn't seem to get sandboxed, but on another site a relatively small number of links seemed to trigger a temporary sandbox.

        It is normal from time to time to see your website drop out of the search engine rankings for 24, 48 hours or more, and then come back.

        So I would just continue building the site for now, and see what it looks like in a few days time.

        Cheers


        Tim

        Hi Tim,

        It is a well recognized effect on new websites. It is not a penalty and it is not "triggered" by your actions.

        It is simply a major swing in rankings caused by the "freshness factor" that impacts new sites more, due to their lower "TrustRank", which takes time to earn.

        Of course, there are many other factors that effect the ranking of both your site and your competitors. This is why the effect varies depending on these other factors.
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        • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
          Yes I agree it does happen to some sites, but certainly not all.

          I don't think it's just a major swing in rankings caused by the freshness factor.

          Otherwise in theory you would not be able to get a new website to page one consistently in a very short timeframe for reasonable competitive keywords, and have the rankings "stick". I've done that too many times now and with enough testing to know it's repeatable (but not 100% of the time).

          I've also had the reverse happen.

          I bought an aged domain (8 years old) that seemed to experience a sandbox effect as well. But I didn't do conclusive testing on this to be fair.

          My point was and is that the sandbox effect does not seem to be consistently applied, irrespective of other ranking factors.

          Such brand new domains have no problems ever, and others do.

          I guess the level of their backlink strategy might be an issue as well. Particularly aggressive linking early in a domains lifetime would likely be a sure way to get sandboxed.

          So in this case it would be triggered by your actions.

          At the end of the day, there's lots of speculation out there (heck I'm speculating here as well!), but unless you happen to be in the inner circle working at google who knows the most current algorithms, it's all just unproven speculation, and can really only be verified one way or the other by your testing.

          Even then it's not that cut and dry, because as your correctly point out there are many other factors that effect ranking.


          Cheers



          Tim


          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          Hi Tim,

          It is a well recognized effect on new websites. It is not a penalty and it is not "triggered" by your actions.

          It is simply a major swing in rankings caused by the "freshness factor" that impacts new sites more, due to their lower "TrustRank", which takes time to earn.

          Of course, there are many other factors that effect the ranking of both your site and your competitors. This is why the effect varies depending on these other factors.
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          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Hi Tim,

            On your 8 year old site that you bought, I would say that there may have been other issues to explain it's drop in rank.

            One of the oldest tricks in the books, is to sell a website based on it's rankings, which are propped up by links from other sites that the seller owns or from friends of theirs and/or paid links. After the sale they will remove the links and your newly purchased site drops in rank. Happens every day.

            You may occasionally see sellers offering to keep these links in place for a specified time period and it becomes part of the negotiation for price.

            There are many factors that effect your rankings and that is all that is needed to explain why some pages seem to avoid the "sandbox effect". When the freshness factor diminishes your page settles down to it's true ranking, earned so far, and that will be different for each page.

            Because all pages of a brand new site are experiencing the temporary boost from the freshness factor (which varies based on topic), it could make a very big drop in rankings or no drop at all if the topic doesn't benefit much from the freshness factor.

            Then there are the various levels of competition. You may only drop a couple positions for some terms but drop hundreds of positions for others.

            I believe these simply and obvious factors are all that is necessary to explain the so called sandbox effect, which isn't a penalty, filter or place that your site is trapped in. It just a construct that people imagine when they see their brand new page rank high for a brief period only to drop after a few weeks.
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            • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
              Hi Don,

              Originally Posted by dburk View Post

              Hi Tim,

              On your 8 year old site that you bought, I would say that there may have been other issues to explain it's drop in rank.

              One of the oldest tricks in the books, is to sell a website based on it's rankings, which are propped up by links from other sites that the seller owns or from friends of theirs and/or paid links. After the sale they will remove the links and your newly purchased site drops in rank. Happens every day.

              You may occasionally see sellers offering to keep these links in place for a specified time period and it becomes part of the negotiation for price.
              Not in this case, it had zero backlinks, I buy keyword rich domains when they expire. I wrote a program that downloads godaddy's list of expired domains each day via FTP and grabs the domains that are keyword rich and have some additional characteristics I look for including age.

              However I agree people could easily do something like this to fudge it, and no doubt there are unscrupulous people doing just that.


              Originally Posted by dburk View Post

              There are many factors that effect your rankings and that is all that is needed to explain why some pages seem to avoid the "sandbox effect". When the freshness factor diminishes your page settles down to it's true ranking, earned so far, and that will be different for each page.

              Because all pages of a brand new site are experiencing the temporary boost from the freshness factor (which varies based on topic), it could make a very big drop in rankings or no drop at all if the topic doesn't benefit much from the freshness factor.

              Then there are the various levels of competition. You may only drop a couple positions for some terms but drop hundreds of positions for others.

              I believe these simply and obvious factors are all that is necessary to explain the so called sandbox effect, which isn't a penalty, filter or place that your site is trapped in. It just a construct that people imagine when they see their brand new page rank high for a brief period only to drop after a few weeks.
              You may well be right with this. I can't say I necessarily agree that there isn't a penalty of filter to some degree, why else would a domain completely disappear from the search engine rankings, sometimes for hours/days at a time? I guess this could be explained away by various factors as well, including being caught in the middle of Googles re-indexing which of course is a very fluid dynamic process.

              But it could also just as likely be a sandbox. There is no real way to know for sure unless you happen to be one of the chosen few at google with the insiders knowledge.

              I will say that in my experience people do tend to worry/focus on the sandbox almost as much as they stress about pagerank (or lack thereof), when both are probably not that important in the scheme of things.

              Cheers



              Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author coreytucker
    thats what I was thinking, build some links besides digg and ezine articles to even things out. Think this might work? Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author coreytucker
      well now im a bit worried about adding the new articles to my site. Im thinking about making another site on the same topic and simply adding all of the articles I have not added to my first site to it and builing both of them.

      That way I can test a new backlink building strategy and let my irst site get out of the sandbox. I will just gradually add to both of them. Can anyone give me a fairly clear number of the type and quanity of backlinks I can build per day with a brand new site? I would like to avoid my second site from going into the sandbox mode also if possible.

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author Tuzic
        Banned
        hi,

        i think its too soon to be sandboxed but link to other bookmarking sites not just this the same ones ..diversify how you get backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I think just submitting to a few directories each day should get you on the map. You might also want to link to a couple of the more important articles in your signature on some forums where you are a member. Making two different sites with a lot of similar content could be a mistake however.
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  • Profile picture of the author coreytucker
    dvduval, all of my content is 100% uniqely written. Yes the content goes over the same type of info, but its all 100%....how could that be a mistake?
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  • Profile picture of the author sylveradex
    Coreytucker, sorry to here that, but having a 100% uniquely written pages is not a mistake, you have your manuscript I believe, so why dont you take bold step and start allover again, it may be painful though.

    Quiters never win and winners dont quite.

    Cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author doc_web
    Corry

    have you checked if your webpages are still indexed?

    If they are indexed, we are sure that its not banned!

    Secondly are you getting any visitors at all.

    Now we don't know how exactly google algorithm works, so it all hit and trial.

    If the keywords you are targeting have some competition then you may need some more links with that anchor in text.
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi coreytucker,

    It does sound like you are experiencing the so called "sandbox". However, the "sandbox" is a natural effect and is not a ban or somehow triggered. It is simply a natural result of Google's algorithm that ranks fresh content higher in their index for a brief period of time.

    This is also known as a the "freshness factor". It tends to cause a rather dramatic swing in rankings for a brand new site. You will see your new website rank higher for a brief period and then sink to it's true ranking level without the benefit of the freshness factor.

    When this effect was first noticed by webmasters many thought they had done something wrong to trigger a penalty, which was eventually dubbed the "sandbox". Over time, the cause of this swing in rankings has come to be more accurately described as the "sandbox effect".

    It's natural, you should expect it and don't be discouraged by it. Just keep doing what you are doing and you will see your site climb in the rankings as it builds TrustRank, which is earned gradually over time.
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  • Profile picture of the author nebuer
    dburk is spot on. I've seen this happen with a lot of my sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stallion
    One of my sites has been in the sandbox for a while. I bought it in June, got some nice traffic building it the first month, than at the first of July, bam, cut off by Google.

    All pages are still indexed. I have a unique name for the site and when I search it, it's like on the 5th page. Top spot goes to ezine articles for the word being mentioned in a resource box.

    It's been there since the first of July, it's October now and it's still in there. Not much I can do about it, but I'm hoping it will come out soon enough.
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  • Profile picture of the author coreytucker
    thanks guys for all of the replies. I have since added about 7 more content pages to this site and made 1 sale from some organic traffic. The problem is im getting hardly any traffic from Google still....maybe 1-2 uniques per day from Google when I was getting alot more.

    Im getting some traffic from MSN but not much. So im really confused on whether or not I should add more articles to the site or just create a brand new site.

    There is one thing I did that I forgot to mention which was I wrote about 7 articles for ezinearticles.com and then a week later I put these same exact articles on my website.

    So could this also be a factor in how my sites ranking? Thanks
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