Sandbox is currently 10 months

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

I registered the domain www.BasicSeo.co.uk on 07-Jan-2008, put up a couple of pages a month later, got a grand total of 3 incoming links and let it sit for a while...

It reared it's head out of the sandbox two days ago, 11 months after registering, 10 months after putting the first page online.

That's about as conclusive test as I'm prepared to try at the moment and thought I'd share. I suppose I'll have to get on with adding some content to it now :redface:

Martin P · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
I registered the domain www.BasicSeo.co.uk on 07-Jan-2008, put up a couple of pages a month later, got a grand total of 3 incoming links and let it sit for a while...

It reared it's head out of the sandbox two days ago, 11 months after registering, 10 months after putting the first page online.

That's about as conclusive test as I'm prepared to try at the moment and thought I'd share. I suppose I'll have to get on with adding some content to it now :redface:

I registered onesixtyltd.co.uk on 04 JUNE 2008, and had a page up on that day. If I type "onesixty" into Google it is on page 1.http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=onesixty&meta=

aidan1980 · Dec 13, 2008

my site was in the sandbox for exactly 8 weeks when i changed the domain from .com to .co.uk. I did add more content and built links though

UKSBD · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
I registered the domain www.BasicSeo.co.uk on 07-Jan-2008, put up a couple of pages a month later, got a grand total of 3 incoming links and let it sit for a while...

It reared it's head out of the sandbox two days ago, 11 months after registering, 10 months after putting the first page online.

That's about as conclusive test as I'm prepared to try at the moment and thought I'd share. I suppose I'll have to get on with adding some content to it now :redface:

Something happened with google a couple of days ago.
A site of mine which appeared to have been filtered for a number of
months suddenly reapeared in the serps again.

Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
I registered the domain www.BasicSeo.co.uk on 07-Jan-2008, put up a couple of pages a month later, got a grand total of 3 incoming links and let it sit for a while...

It reared it's head out of the sandbox two days ago, 11 months after registering, 10 months after putting the first page online.

That's about as conclusive test as I'm prepared to try at the moment and thought I'd share. I suppose I'll have to get on with adding some content to it now :redface:

You should have done some SEO on the site.

Ain't had a site go in the sand in a couple of years.

Earl

deniser · Dec 13, 2008

Well I always thought the sandbox existed until I put up a temporary home page for new site a few weeks ago with very few words on it, gave it a meta title and one reciprocal link to and from my main site, checked that if I googled its name it was there (which it was at no.1 position from the start) and thought nothing of it until I noticed that my main site was actually getting quite a number of visitors from it.

I thought this was strange as I intended to leave it sitting where it was for at least 6 months before doing anything with it and did a search for the main keyword which I am intending it be used for and was gobsmacked to find it in google on page 10. I had expected to have to trawl through to at least page 60. Not only that but it ranks higher than most of the other well established businesses in this field of which there are thousands.

So I now don't think the google sandbox exists at all. With a bit of work it should be easy to get it to no.2 which is where I want it to sit as my main site has no.1 - but I am actually embarrassed that it is getting any traffic as there is nothing on the page.

Must get going with designing the site!

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

MARTIN ADAM PEARSE said:
I registered onesixtyltd.co.uk on 04 JUNE 2008, and had a page up on that day. If I type "onesixty" into Google it is on page 1

Not for me. I don't see it anywhere.

Sirearl, I purposely left the site alone. It was a test

One other thing I've learned is that adsesne clicks for SEO terms are worth a lot more than I thought, I reckoned they'd be almost worthless.

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

deniser said:
Well I always thought the sandbox existed until I put up a temporary home page for new site a few weeks ago with very few words on it, gave it a meta title and one reciprocal link to and from my main site, checked that if I googled its name it was there (which it was at no.1 position from the start) and thought nothing of it until I noticed that my main site was actually getting quite a number of visitors from it.

I thought this was strange as I intended to leave it sitting where it was for at least 6 months before doing anything with it and did a search for the main keyword which I am intending it be used for and was gobsmacked to find it in google on page 10. I had expected to have to trawl through to at least page 60. Not only that but it ranks higher than most of the other well established businesses in this field of which there are thousands.

So I now don't think the google sandbox exists at all. With a bit of work it should be easy to get it to no.2 which is where I want it to sit as my main site has no.1 - but I am actually embarrassed that it is getting any traffic as there is nothing on the page.

Must get going with designing the site!

When I first opened the SEO site it was on page 1 for 3 weeks... it's only after a few weeks that the sandbox kicks in and your site disappears... for 10 months it seems. Of course if you are pro-actively link building or add numerous pages then you could get out of the sandbox quicker. This was about as close to a controlled experiment as I could get.

Regards
James.

Martin P · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
Not for me. I don't see it anywhere.

Weird... it's gone. On .co.uk it's now on page 2. Why does it just disappear?!

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

UKSBD said:
Something happened with google a couple of days ago.
A site of mine which appeared to have been filtered for a number of
months suddenly reapeared in the serps again.

It would be interesting to know how many incoming links you have to that site...??

Regards
James.

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

MARTIN ADAM PEARSE said:
Weird... it's gone. On .co.uk it's now on page 2. Why does it just disappear?!

That second search is for UK only pages.. which makes it a WHOLE lot easier, not that I've ever spent much time looking at UK only results
If I try UK only for my seo site it comes up second. I don't see you in the main index at all.

Regards
James.

Martin P · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
That second search is for UK only pages.. which makes it a WHOLE lot easier, not that I've ever spent much time looking at UK only results
If I try UK only for my seo site it comes up second. I don't see you in the main index at all.

Regards
James.

I see what you mean
But unless I am seeing things, it was defiantly there on .com when I copied the link + I did also see it a few days ago! Weird.

deniser · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
When I first opened the SEO site it was on page 1 for 3 weeks... it's only after a few weeks that the sandbox kicks in and your site disappears... for 10 months it seems. Of course if you are pro-actively link building or add numerous pages then you could get out of the sandbox quicker. This was about as close to a controlled experiment as I could get.

Regards
James.

Curious, I just went back and checked the date and it was during the first couple of weeks of August that the page went up so it's actually 4 months (although it feels like only a few weeks!). It's always been there if you google its name as I have checked every couple of weeks. It hasn't been in the sandbox at all for its name.

I didn't think to check it for a search term until this week as I thought it was too new.

awebapart.com · Dec 13, 2008

JustOneUK said:
It reared it's head out of the sandbox two days ago, 11 months after registering, 10 months after putting the first page online.

That's about as conclusive test as I'm prepared to try at the moment and thought I'd share. I suppose I'll have to get on with adding some content to it now :redface:

Interesting, thanks for sharing that. For new sites, the google sandbox is only supposed to kick in for popular search results, for less popular more specific queries it shouldn't kick in, which is why you should still be able to target more long tail searches with a new site. I'm sure there must be quite a few factors which google will consider before sandboxing, and for what period.

Basic seo isn't really that popular a search term, with only 58 exact searches a month according to the google adwords tool, so I'm surprised it was sandboxed. We have a new client site that has gone live in the last few weeks and it is ranking for more popular terms than that (thebosomboutique.com number 11 on google for a term with 140 exact searches a month), though not primary home page terms, so perhaps another factor as well as search popularity is whether google deems your site as targeting that term as a primary search term (perhaps looking out for doorway/feeder sites). Perhaps google doesn't look at search popularity and looks at seacrh competition instead, basic seo is more competitive than my client's search term. Of course there could be a whole load of other factors involved too, who knows? Perhaps google is more likely to sandbox any site targeting terms that threatens its own adword revenue, i.e. SEO!

Dec 13, 2008

awebapart.com said:
Perhaps google is more likely to sandbox any site targeting terms that threatens its own adword revenue, i.e. SEO!

You old cynic.

I have suspected that for quite a while,and do believe that google wants not quality results at the top of the SERP's ,but ones that do not threaten there revenue.

Earl

JustOneUK · Dec 13, 2008

awebapart.com said:
Perhaps google is more likely to sandbox any site targeting terms that threatens its own adword revenue, i.e. SEO!

Ha! we all know Google is (and will continue to) manipulating search results so that people find it necessary to purchase adwords - that is the principle behind the sandbox in the first place.

"I have a site and I rank nowhere and probably won't for at least 10 months, what are my options?...."

It will only get worse.. but as someone who makes a living from adsense I'm not really going to complain

UKSBD · Dec 13, 2008

Hard to say.
It's just a 5 year old site that I use for testing purposes and other things.
6 months ago it was number one for it's name, then all of a sudden it
dropped down to 50+ and had been there until 2 days ago when it
suddenly reappeared back at the top.

The content on it varies, but I haven't changed anything in all the time
it has been missing.

Edit to say this is a reply to post 10

fisicx · Dec 15, 2008

JustOneUK said:
Ha! we all know Google is (and will continue to) manipulating search results so that people find it necessary to purchase adwords - that is the principle behind the sandbox in the first place.

That's a pretty strong statement and if there was any truth in it evidence would have been unearthed and MS and co would have google up in front of the beak since it opposes their whole technology ethos.

The actual sandbox thing existed long before adsense/adwords and back in 2005 Matt Cutt said:

There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn't apply to all industries.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002809.html

JustOneUK · Dec 15, 2008

fisicx said:
That's a pretty strong statement and if there was any truth in it evidence would have been unearthed and MS and co would have google up in front of the beak since it opposes their whole technology ethos.
The actual sandbox thing existed long before adsense/adwords and back in 2005 Matt Cutt said:

Sure, it's just my take on it. Google has shareholders to satisfy now and increasing adwords revenue is paramount to it's continued growth. They can do that in a number of ways including adjusting the placement or presentation on the results page or perhaps even tweaking the sandbox. Unless you actually work at Google then it's all theoretical. Google has an exceptional business strategy which has to be admired not in the least it's adsense program whereby it pays a % commission to it's advertisers... but doesn't disclose what that % is... very clever

Who knows what is in store for search over the coming years but you can be assured that google will continue to make it's crust.

Aspect Investments · Dec 15, 2008

If you know what you are doing, there is no such thing as the sandbox.

fisicx · Dec 15, 2008

JustOneUK said:
They can do that in a number of ways including adjusting the placement...

Not quite. The can make changes importance of the indexing signals (like filtering out link exchanges) but google cannot manually tweak or adjust the placement of an entry in the organic results pages. There are no doubt teams of lawyers itching at the chance show that Google is manipulating the SERPs so if there was the slightest evidence that there is any human intervention between indexing and ranking Google would be in serious poo.

And there is no generic sandbox. There are some features in the indexing algo that delays the publishing of specific sites but for the general public this is not noticeable.

JustOneUK · Dec 15, 2008

fisicx said:
Not quite. The can make changes importance of the indexing signals (like filtering out link exchanges) but google cannot manually tweak or adjust the placement of an entry in the organic results pages. .

No, you misread what I meant.
At the moment there are two sponsored results at the top of a results page... they could change that to 4 or 6 whenever they want thus making adwords more effective and increasing their revenue.

regards
James.

fisicx · Dec 15, 2008

OK - I agree with you there. But filling the page with sponsored ads would be downfall of the SE - all it then becomes is a paid for directory. So I'm not so sure google will go down this road. Even their experiements with same colour backgrounds was shelved very quickly - I think google (despite it's shareholder) wants to build trust. All of their patents and documentation show that they are looking more at relevance than ever before: delivering accurate results that meet the needs of the visitor.

Jonesy · Dec 15, 2008

Bit old, but a good read: Google Sandbox Analysis.

JustOneUK · Dec 15, 2008

fisicx said:
OK - I agree with you there. But filling the page with sponsored ads would be downfall of the SE .

If you search for 'mobile sim' you get 3 adwords results at the top, 8 more adwords results to the right column and eBay shopping results (with 3 links) buried bang in the middle of the organic results, and of course the 10 organic results themselves - that's 14 paid links and 10 natural. Let's not even mention when 'Youtube' stuff or 'News Results' also crop up.

5 years ago if I had said it would be that way you'd probably have replied "filling the page with sponsored ads would be downfall of the SE" It hasn't been so far

I think Google has plenty more in the tank when it comes to displaying adwords results. 4, 5 or 6 at the top won't be unheard of for long, maybe even a left hand column with 8 more links

James.

Dec 15, 2008

JustOneUK said:
If you search for 'mobile sim' you get 3 adwords results at the top, 8 more adwords results to the right column and eBay shopping results (with 3 links) buried bang in the middle of the organic results, and of course the 10 organic results themselves - that's 14 paid links and 10 natural. Let's not even mention when 'Youtube' stuff or 'News Results' also crop up.

5 years ago if I had said it would be that way you'd probably have replied "filling the page with sponsored ads would be downfall of the SE" It hasn't been so far

I think Google has plenty more in the tank when it comes to displaying adwords results. 4, 5 or 6 at the top won't be unheard of for long, maybe even a left hand column with 8 more links

James.

Agreed............

Earl

quikshop · Dec 15, 2008

JustOneUK said:
I think Google has plenty more in the tank when it comes to displaying adwords results. 4, 5 or 6 at the top won't be unheard of for long, maybe even a left hand column with 8 more links

Ahh the pressures of having to keep share holders happy as well as search engine users

The search pages are getting messy. 3 sponsored links at the top, followed by Google news and shopping links, followed by an ever so funny YouTube link followed by a few naturally placed websites followed by 'did you mean' helpful suggestion links...

Oh and not to mention the large map and associated links if there is a geographical element to your search... methinks Google are loosing sight of why their search engine has been so dominant.

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