What is the Google Sandbox?

The common perception is that Google penalizes new websites by artificially putting down their rankings and keeping new websites out of the top results for an undetermined period of time (between 6 to 18 months).

There is a lot of argument on what the Sandbox is but two things must be absolutely clear for us to begin with:

• This effect concerns new sites only
• Evidence shows that new websites in fact do not get ranked as well as they “should”.

New sites are thus penalized by Google (placed in the Sandbox, so to speak) and can only break out once Google ‘lets’ them – usually when this ‘penalty’ expires.

This is the basic view on Google Sandbox. Like most things in SEO, it is also depressingly simplistic and fails to take into account what Google’s algorithm works like.

So if you were to ask me if Google Sandbox existed, I’d say yes and no. Yes, because the effects it describes are real and documented. No, because the reasoning and causation provided is inaccurate.

Ok, really now, what the hell is the Sandbox?

(The following is speculation – and while this is no different than the reasoning provided for the Sandbox effect, it is in my view more accurate and keeping with the facts, especially with evidence of websites that do not get sandboxed at all).

The Sandbox is hard to understand primarily because we don’t have an accurate understanding of how Google’s ranking algorithm works.

Google filters new links that it finds based on the following filters:

• Time since the page was first found

  This is a penalty that decreases with time (as the page gets older).

• Age of the website in Google’s index

  When was the website first indexed by Google? A website’s age is just one of several measures Google takes to determine the “authority” status of a website. This has been shown to matter indirectly by several SEOs who bought out old websites in their industries instead of setting up new websites (read Screw the Sandbox – Buy old sites – especially the comments section – for more on this).

• Age of the domain

  How old is the domain? The effects of the domain-age factor are once again debatable, but as mentioned above, evidence suggests that if you want to skip the sandbox, one strategy is to buy old websites and use them.

• Quality of backlinks

  Backlink “quality” is a whole different can of worms and is covered in serious detail elsewhere. For the purposes of this discussion, if a new page has links from other web pages / websites that are already highly ranked (sites considered as “authorities” in their niches), then those links are considered quality links and that page has a good chance of ranking highly (and possibly skipping the sandbox altogether).

• Link-building patterns

  Did all the links to this site suddenly pop up one fine day? If so, is there an overwhelming diversity in the nature of the links (something that would happen if the website got ‘dugg’ or covered by a major newspaper or other website, for example)?

  If not, there is a chance those links were bought or gained through reciprocal linking.

  Many SEOs prescribe following ‘natural’ link-building patterns – the problem is that in Google’s ideal world you don’t solicit or buy links – you network and produce ‘linkable’ content, and the rest takes care of itself.

  For Google then, if you wish to follow natural link building, go viral, create link bait and focus on creating quality linkable content.

  Or if you can afford to wait for an year, screw the “natural” bit and get as many links as possible (don’t forget to super-optimize your website) – Yahoo and MSN will treat you like royalty, and 30-40% of the web’s traffic isn’t bad, is it?

There are most definitely other factors that come into consideration as well, such as the age of the domain, or the update frequency of the sites linking to this new page.

However, the bottom line is that Sandbox does not exist in the form that people have described it to be. At best, it is a side-effect of the various measures Google takes to provide the most relevant results to its users.

The rest of this article describes how you can beat the sandbox effect – whether you are starting a new site or if you’re stuck in the sandbox with no hope in sight.

How To Beat The Sandbox Effect

Ok, let’s pretend for a second that you are launching a brand new website and you want to skip the sandbox effect. This means, that in effect, you have to prove to Google that your website is one of the, if not THE, authority websites in your niche. You would do that by getting a wide variety of websites to link to you (within their content if possible).

Lots of links, varied anchor text, if possible within content. Sounds like link bait to me. Get on to it.

It is also possible to rank highly through smart reciprocal linking (in-content), but you still have to back that up with one-way links.

Help! I’m stuck in the Sandbox!

A common pattern for new websites is that they tend to rank immediately for their key terms (especially if this website has done extensive link-building early on), but then fall off the charts a few weeks or a couple of months later. This is the most obvious indication that a site has fallen victim to the Sandbox effect, and the severity of this drop from the SERPS is what leads most people to argue so strongly in favor of a Google Sandbox.

If you find out that your website doesn’t rank well at all (at times not even for your own name) and that the top websites for your keywords are all trash, AND you rank well for your keywords in Yahoo and MSN, you’re literally stuck in the Sandbox.

Google now thinks that your website cannot be immediately trusted (based on the information it has gathered from your website and its backlinks). Even more to the point (since Google is heavily biased in favor of link-based analysis), Google does not trust your backlinks.

Thoughts on ageing

No, this is not a tangent on getting old. I’m talking about links. Once important concept to remember is that Google can track the ‘age’ of a link – that is, how long ago was this link discovered by Google. SEOs have theorized that Google uses link-ageing to establish the ‘trust’ for a link

Thoughts on trusted links

A link is trusted by Google based on the following criteria:

• How popular / trusted the linking website is – authority sites do best.
• Age of the link – as discussed above.
• Nature of link (in-content vs. link list, main page vs. sub-page) – In-content links work best, and the location of the link itself matters as well (better to be on the main page than in some long-lost corner).
• Direction of link - Link to the main page vs. a link to an inner page.
• Links to inner pages (deep links) are definitely more valuable as they are a validation that your website’s content is good enough to be linked to (and thus ‘more relevant’).

How To Get Out Of The Sandbox

Quite simply, build links that Google can trust. Create linkable content (reports, new tools, articles) and promote them on your site, in forums and around social bookmarking sites (if appropriate). The key is to realize that if your site is suffering from the sandbox effect, it is because of something you did (or didn’t do).

Similarly, it’s in your hands to get out of the sandbox. All you have to do (excuse the pun) is to stop relying on old-fashioned link-building and start thinking “outside the box”.

Submit: