How long does the sandbox last?

[sfowler]

I started my site in May this year, and after months of bein nowhere in the results I suddenly turned up as number one for "combustion analyser" on Google! Either they have problems with their index again, or all the work is paying off.

[Mike-sfsgo]

Most estimates are approximately 3 months. It is suggested that it applies to gaining large quantities of BL's. Therefore, not only new sites are affected but also existing sites that gain large numbers of BL's. If yo are continuously adding a lot of links then it should have a rolling effect.

Mike.

[wednesday]

Does adding more IBLs means that you would sank deeper in the sands.

[sfowler]

I don't think so. I suddenly appeared today at position one with no warning. I work continuously on getting extra links.

[wednesday]

I've started website in Feb. Renked very well anywhere else.
PR5 since about 5-6 months. But sandboxed. With poor gg serps. 9 moths in the sandbox. Once out I've got to have many top positions. But adding links(reciprocal and non reciprocal) hasn't made any good so far.

And another site. An interesting scenario there. :)
It's non profit organisation. The site is online more than 2 years.
But the previous webmaster used coockies for language switching. So it was not indexed by any search engine. The site has 100s of natural IBLs. Indexed about 2 months ago.
And it is there - sandboxed. :) Googling by organization's name shows 30-40 pages linking to the site before the site apears. This doesn't look fair in anyway. I'm very frustrated with this. A funny situation. I think GG is over reacting here.

[cbp]

martis - neither of your sites are sandboxed. The sandbox has ony applied to sites that are new domains from around March of this year. Look for other reasons for poor rankings

CBP

[wednesday]

All simptoms are presented. I think there is a clear diagnose.

[cbp]

All simptoms are presented

The main symptom is that it only applies to sites that are new since March this year - you said your sites are older than this.

Here is the crieria:
IMHO, a sandboxed site is:
1) New domain - probably since March or so of this year
2) On page SEO is OK, but not overdone
3) Good number of links, esp with keyword(s) in anchor text
4) Googlebot crawls often
5) Most/many pages are indexed
6) Ranks well for obscure terms
7) Ranks very well for the allins for main keyword (important criteria)
8) Does not rank in top 700 or so for term that its optimized for.
9) Absence of anything that could attract a penalty.

Mst sites I hve looked at that are sandoxed, are not, they just rank poorly.

CBP

[sfowler]

Could that be the reason that http://www.habmigern2003.info suddenly turned up today? I started it in May.

[cbp]

Could be - there does not yet appear to be any clear pattern or consensus about sites coming out of the sandbox.

CBP

[sfowler]

The strange thing is that the phrase that came up was "combustion analyser". I had started off with "flue gas analyser" in May and the last few weeks I have been working on the American misspelling "combustion analyzer". I have some links with the British spelling internally, and a few external as well, but I had not really been working on it. Anyway, it made my week!

[Tamera Billings]

Hi cbp,

My site fits most of what you describe as a sandboxed site. It has been online since the middle of September.

My questions are:

What determines whether SEO is overdone or ok?

As far as I know my site has no ranking for ANY terms with google. How do I find this out?

What are allins for main keyword?

How do I know [other than major penalties] what attracts a penalty from google?


2) On page SEO is OK, but not overdone
6) Ranks well for obscure terms
7) Ranks very well for the allins for main keyword (important criteria)
9) Absence of anything that could attract a penalty.

My site is
http://www.pinelakedistribution.com

Any help would be a God send.
Thanks

[wednesday]

Originally Posted by cbp

1) New domain - probably since March or so of this year

The first site started about 25 of Feb
The second become visible for the engines 3 months ago.
(used to have cookie redirection and not a chance to be indexed)

3) Good number of links, esp with keyword(s) in anchor text
4) Googlebot crawls often

dayly

5) Most/many pages are indexed

all of them


and my favorite one

7) Ranks very well for the allins for main keyword (important criteria)

+ top serps in msn and yahoo

Anyway the sites are far away from perfect. May be just filtered for any other reason. I don't insist on being sandboxed :)
Just keep head up and keep on working...