What is the Google sandbox?
What is the Google sandbox?
To start off I have to say that the Google sandbox is a ‘theory’ and the term has been created by somebody other than Google. Google has never actually confirmed it exists, so until they confirm it, it will stay a theory. The Google sandbox idea is very simple. At the start of 2004 new websites started to not rank well in the Google results for their targeted keywords or they found that their site ranked well for a couple of weeks and were then dropped way down in the results , but they were seeing good results in Yahoo! and MSN.
Way Google did this is not known for sure, but there are a couple of possibilities:
The first possibility is that Google may stall the addition of brand-new websites to encourage owners to build quality, content-based websites instead of “thin” sites providing information that is repeated other websites. The delay would encourage site owners to add more content on their main website instead of building useless mini sites. So effectively, rather than the search engines being clogged with poor quality but heavily SEO'd (search engine optimised) websites, they would get a better quality of website prevailing for the more popular keywords. This is what Google wants – a better customer experience where they get what they want the first time.
The other, less likely idea is that Google makes most of it profits from its sponsored links at the top of the search page, so if your site gets relegated to the back pages of a search, then a site can get listed at the front again by paying for a sponsored listing. Then if Google sandboxes every new website, and a company has even a small advertising budget then they will have no qualms paying 20c to get get on the front page again since they are getting no traffic anyway. Since the Sandbox was introduced Google has had record profits from its AdSense advertising program.
Some people believe that adding too many back links too quickly can get you off side with Google and get you placed in the sandbox. Typically when this happens there are other reasons involved, and the addition of backlinks and rocketing up in the rankings has just bought the SEO'ed site to Googles attention.
Regardless of the real reason behind the sandbox, it has had positives and negatives. The positive is for the customers of Google; they can now be sure that for any keywords they search, they will be returned quality content, not just websites that are good at SEO. The negative is for the search engine optimisers and owners of new websites as all their efforts will not be rewarded for a while.
How do you know if you're in the Sandbox?
The easiest way is to look at the age of your site. Most websites move from the sandbox after 8 months or so, so if you have a website that more than 12 months old that is fully optimized and has a lot of quality backlinks and you are still listed on the back pages, then chances are your website is receiving some kind of penalty. To check this sign up to google webmasters tools and search for any errors etc.
How do you get out of the sandbox?
If the website is new, then you can expect that it will be fully listed within 6-8 months in Google from the time when it was first indexed your website. While you are waiting, don't just sit there doing nothing, add fresh unique content to your web site, get good incoming links and make sure that your web pages are optimised for Google. But be careful not to over-optimise or you could end up doing more harm than good! Google wants the best content for its users not the most optimised content!!
Remember, Google isn’t the only search engine on the Internet, Yahoo and MSN don't have such a delay so don't focus all your efforts on Google alone but also optimise your web pages for these search engines.
Is there a way to get out faster?
It seems that there is very little that can be done to speed up the sandbox process. Some experts suggest getting back links that point to different content pages of your website ( not just to your index page). Others suggest trying to get quality links from .edu or .gov websites. The idea is to try and convince Google your site has quality content that their users should be seeing.
The “sandbox”, if it exists, is Google's way to prevent spammers from creating thin SEO'ed web sites that are just after quick gains. Google aims to return high quality web sites with good content in its result pages. So while you’re waiting for your site to escape the sandbox you might as well spend your time writing good content for your website, and try to get good quality, one-way backlinks, and before you know it the 6-8months will be up.
Tags: Google
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