Difference Between A Google Dance And Sand Box

by Banned 31 replies
38
Hi warriors,

Can anyboby please tell me the difference between a google dance and sand box. Recently two of my brand new websites(both three months old) disappeared from google. The both of them were ranking on page one. Position3 and 8respectively.

I did some heavy link building, since last two weeks, on all of my sites.around 100 profile links, 20 blog commenting and 5 articles links

My first site is flactuating between page 5 and 6 since yesterday. As for the second site i can't find it anywhere. The good thing is that the big G has not deindexed both my site.

Has anyone experienced this kind of situation? Any help will be appreciated.
#search engine optimization #box #dance #difference #google #sand
  • Try doing site:yourdomain.com -if you're still listed, then your site is not sandboxed.

    Don't worry about google dance or sandbox. You will be fine. Just add content on a regular basis and get backlinks. Time spent checking your Google ratings is time wasted.
  • I agree whole-heartedly. If a search for site:yourdomain.com shows some results, then you have not been banned from Google. So long as your site has not been banned, you are still in the running to achieve page one search results.



    The flip answer to your question is that one is real and one is imaginary. ;-)

    Be prepared, because people are going to flip on me over my opinion on the Sandbox.

    The Google Dance is real. That is when you check your results over the course of a day or week, and you see that your ranking is moving all over the place.

    For example, I posted a new blog post a couple days back that was designed to target about 4 keyword phrases. Within just a few hours, Google had crawled the page. Eight hours after posting, my preferred target phrase was at #201. Twelve hours after posting, it was at #132. Twenty-four hours after posting, it was ranked #96. This morning - 36 hours after posting - it was not in the top 1000.

    Some people would suggest that this means that my blog post was "sandboxed".

    Just a few minutes ago, I found my post back at #321, so even though it was gone for a few hours, it is now back in the listings.

    My second target keyword phrase for the same blog post was not in the top 1000, at the eight hour mark after posting. Twelve hours after posting, it was in the 500's. Twenty-four hours after posting, it was #17. Thirty-Six hours after posting, it was #6. And just a few minutes ago, it had dropped to #7.

    This is the very definition of the Google Dance.

    Your ranking position in the SERPS is always on the move. It goes up and down, as Google adds and removes data from its databases, and it recalculates the perceived value of your page.

    Now, I am going to tweak some people off... The Google Sandbox is not real.

    The theory behind the Sandbox is that Google will honor your page with some ranking, for a very short time, then Google will drop your listing into oblivion, never to be seen again.

    The Sandbox is, I believe, one of those myths created by an SEO Professional to explain to a customer why their page dropped out of the SERPS for a particular keyword phrase...

    But think about this...

    Google may show 40 million search results on a particular query, but they will only show up to 1000 of those for any search phrase. As you drill down into their results, they shorten and lower the number of results they are willing to show you.

    For example. On my primary target phrase, page one says that there are 1 to 100 of 265 million results. At the bottom of the page, I have links to eight pages in Google for that phrase. If I immediately click to page 8, they show me 501-581.

    If I keep clicking Next Page, the number of pages keep shrinking. When I hit page 3, then my options drop to 7 pages. When I get to page 6, that is the end of the road with results 501-581.

    All my absence from the SERPS really says is that my page does not score in the top 581 results...

    The argument is often that if I cannot see my page in the top 581 results for a particular phrase, then my page is sandboxed! In theory, it has been dropped into the oblivion of darkness at Google, never to surface again, without a miracle from God...

    Interestingly, while my main keyword phrase would suggest that the Sandbox Proponents are right and that there is a Sandbox, my page was still sitting at #6 on another keyword phrase, while it was absent from the SERPS on another keyword phrase.

    The Google Sandbox in my mind is just an excuse that high-paid SEO professionals tell their clients, as the excuse for a page dropping out of the search results for a particular keyword. After all, if their customers continue to believe in the mystical sandbox, then their customers will not blame them for the failure to deliver the Search Marketing results the customer was hoping to achieve. Once the drop in ranking can be attributed to Google's inner-workings, then the customer cannot be mad at the SEO provider and everybody can be happy again. ;-)

    Of course, when Google only shows 581 results out of 265 million results, there are going to be 264 million, 999 thousand, and 419 upset people. Not everyone can get all of their pages ranked in the visible SERPs, for all of their target keywords. The odds are statistically against us, no matter what we are trying to get ranked in Google or any other search engine.

    I create a lot of content online, and I possess more than my fair share of page one rankings in Google. There are some keyword phrases that I would kill to achieve a page one ranking for, but those phrases are hyper-competitive, so I just keep plugging away to try to move my ranking up. There are other keyword phrases where very little effort is actually required to achieve page one results.

    If any page on the Internet has a single keyword phrase resolving to the visible SERPs, then it is not really ignored by Google. And if your page does not hold a place in the visible SERPs for your preferred target keyword phrase, then it is simply not relevant enough in Google's algorithms at this time.

    I phrased that last sentence deliberately, "simply not relevant enough in Google's algorithms at this time", because with a little or a lot of work, any page can be brought out of the shadows into the light of day within Google's SERPs.

    I have always believed the Google Sandbox to be a SEO Myth, and anyone who cares to try will be hard-pressed to convince me otherwise.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • For the most part nobody knows the answer to this - it is all theory as I doubt people who work on Google's algorithim are posting here - though all of this makes great forum fodder. You will not see any statments of fact (with data to back it up) explaining any of these concepts. So just don't worry about it.

      I agree with the previous two posters - simply continue to add content and do your backlink/seo work and if you are not ranking then be patient then tweak your site or move on.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    Thanks guys for the in insight. I guess i have to move on and be patient. And of course, do my usual content and backlinking stuff. After all, at the end backlinks and good content matters.
    Thanks.
    • [1] reply
    • Google dance = Your site moving up and down the rankings while Google works out where you should be ranked.

      Google sandbox = Something mythical that people make up when they can't figure out why their site isn't ranking well.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • So you can't get de-indexed?
    • [1] reply
    • I am pretty sure that no one suggested that it was not possible to be "de-indexed"...

      In fact, at least two of us suggested that one should verify that you have not been de-indexed (banned), before looking further...

  • So, you are saying there is no such thing as a Sandbox, but you CAN get nuked entirely?
    • [1] reply
    • Yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting.
      • [1] reply
  • Becomming sandboxed, means Google deindexes your website, therefore you are no longer indexed by Google, at all (In public anyway, I'm sure Google don't delete the data) - The google dance is just a huge decrease in SERP ranking, then a huge increase later on (Well, thats what you hope for), the google dance is there to test websites, to see if they are infact any good and weather they just die out because, well they aren't good engouth for a first page ranking.
  • I think Google Sandbox Does Exits! It is NOT a Myth.

    However, very rarely your site get caught in this filter - totally de-indexed and even using the "site:" or "info:" command can't find you anywhere!

    Usually new site will encounter such a problem, to solve this is easy. Throw bunch of authority backlinks to it, with enough trust rank, your site will be out of the sandbox!

    If you still can't get out, PM me, I'll show you a cool trick.

    Kok Choon
  • my question is:

    google penalty is real (the big G slaps you and drops your site 30+ or even 300+ serp spots)

    so isn't google penalty = google sandbox???

    if that is the case then google sand box is alive and kicking!
    • [1] reply
    • The "Google Sandbox" - Does not exist except within your imagination. There are lots of folks with very active imaginations and that is why you hear so many talk about it as if it's real.

      What is real is QDF (Query Deserves Freshness), sometimes called the "Freshness Factor" and TrustRank also called trust factors. These two factors combine to send your new pages on a wild ride up the rankings and then back down nearly as quick. The term "Sandbox Effect" was coined to describe the effect of these two factors combined on the ranking of new pages.

      The notion of a "Google Sandbox" as some penalty box that you somehow trigger is pure hogwash. Yes, you can get de-indexed for violating Google's Guidelines for Webmasters. Most folks who feel that they are in the mythical "Google Sandbox" are not de-indexed but simply not ranking well for their targeted keyword due to the superior ranking of their competition.

      I believe the QDF factor gives many folks a false since of accomplishment because they actually believe they earned that excellent ranking and are baffled as to what happened after the QDF effect wears off. That's when you typically hear the "Google Sandbox" myth being trotted out.

      In reality there is nothing that you can do to cause, or prevent the so called sandbox effect. It's been a part of Google's algorithm for many years and nearly every new web page is treated exactly the same way. The reason this effect seems more pronounced in some cases is because some keywords have more competition and require more promotion to earn the ranking that was temporarily garnered through QDF.
      • [ 3 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • A site is sandboxed when it is new and does not rank for keyword phrases that are not incredibly competitive (such as a unique company name) in Google after making the page "search engine friendly" and after being indexed.
  • @ hidohebhi

    What have you been doing as far as backlinking goes for your site. Hitting a site with lots of backlinks and then stopping completely (as in... on vacation) seems to be an effective way of experiencing the "google dance".

    I think if you continue to backlink with quality and diversity in your backlinks you should be able to see an improvement in your ranking and more "stickiness" with regards to the dance.
    • [1] reply
    • @Beldin,

      Thanks for the reply - I'm fairly new at this, but I also suspected that the vacation period (3 weeks with little to no backlinking), followed by my return, where I try to get 20-30 backlinks per day, probably caused the dance.

      Sometimes it just all seems so silly to me, because the page is on-site optimized well and has unique content very relevant to the keywords, yet Google ranks it for weeks at a time at the very bottom of the results.

      I'm ok with it and will keep getting quality backlinks - just really wanted to know if other people had experienced this particular kind of dance, since most of the posts I read here are either about a page falling 7-8 pages in the results or else being completely de-indexed.

      Thanks again.
  • if you read this forum there are many arguments to support the existence of sandbox. revenues have fallen and so are the traffic. there must be some truth in it.
  • i have 2 Blog on Blogspot custom domain with Sandbox,..and then i'm trying to move my blog on My Self Hosting,..then my Blog listed by google.
  • Hi all,

    What about this then. I have a site thats over a year old and for most of that year it was on google page one and pos 3-6 for my main keyword, we are talking low to med competition here. The url that was ranking was not my homepage but an inner page. To get that url there all i did was a few EZA and some profile links as well as crapy blog comments.

    Now i didnt touch this site or do any backlinks to it for about 8 months. Two weeks ago i decided to go back to the site and pretty it up a bit and put an opt-in box above the fold.

    I then joined an article network with 50 good PR blogs to upload some of my articles to. All with well spun content and all with unique titles.

    I also pinged the urls that these articles went on, didnt do this all in one day but over a course of a week.

    And my results are: The url that was on page one pos 3-6 has now been de-indexed!!
    Not the site but only that url! any ideas as to how to get it back up?

    Cheers
    mike
  • google dance : it's only temporary of reindexing because there is some site that extreme optimise with some keyword. It's okay if your site good link building

    Sandbox: Google indicated if you site a spam.
    • [1] reply
    • Sandbox has nothing to do with spam...

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