Average time in Sandbox?

[ukbrad1980]

Forgive me the indulgance of using one of my own sites as an example for this, but as time progresses it seems that it takes longer & longer to move out of the sandbox and into regular positions on Google - especially for more generic, fewer word search phrases.

Using www.bigscreencells.com and the search term 'film cells' as an example:

• Launched in August 2004
  Shows #11 for allinanchor
  Appears #1 in Yahoo.co.uk, MSN.co.uk, Lycos.co.uk etc
  Shows 83 backlinks in Google
  Shows 256 backlinks in AllTheWeb
  No hidden text, limited use of alt tags, no spamming of Meta data

Generally the site fluctuates between pages 5-7 on Google, but has today dropped down even further to past page 20. This also happened during Jagger, but re-appeared when the dust settled.

Is 18 months - 2 years now the realistic timeframe for a new website to wait in the sandbox? Are there now other factors to consider?

I don't beleive my site to adopt any black hat techniques. Generally, I have tried to make careful use of headline tags, bolding etc without spilling overboard into the "Spam Camp".

Thanks,
Brad

[SEOforGoogle]

On average, any sites I do get out of the "sandbox" in 4 months. This is only if they are new sites.

I don't think you are sandboxed, but rather, you need to work on your rankings more - You say your site ca nbe found on pages 5-7 - so, you are on the dancing floor, now you just need to step up your efforts.

[greeneagle]

ukbrad1980,

I believe if you completely drop the extreme crosslinking scheme on all your websites to each other, you might see ranking improvements in all your Sites.

That's just my opinion, especially since they are not relevant to each other, for the most part.

Test; Dropping the OBLs off one first, and try that alone.

Ken

[dburdon]

UKBrad180,

it looks like you're in a competitive sector. A few more links would help. 83 IBLs are not a lot in your sector.

[dawilliams]

I agree with greeneagle wholeheartedly.

two developers agree on this topic -
now if we could get that fifth dentist to cave ("4 out of 5 dentists recommend")the world may take a turn for the better.

Happy Holidays

[incrediblehelp]

Greenie is right. What does the home page of www.allhomelighting.com and www.eyesbright.com have to do with www.bigscreencells.com? Interlinking itself is not so bad as everyone makes it. When interlinking you just have to make sure you are doing it for a reason that makes sense to the end user. If you write a article that is pertinent to appearing on www.eyesbright.com and it makes sense within this article to link to www.bigscreencells.com then it is OK. Just slapping links in the footer is not going to work anymore.

Another issue is how many domains you have on your IP's. I would consider getting unique IPs for each of your domains. Right now it seems you have 27 different websites hosted on the IP for www.bigscreencells.com:

http://www.whois.sc/bigscreencells.com

Lastly you seem to be competing on one of those unique niches that has lots of Amazon and eBay competing pages. To bad for you. I have client in this same boat right now. Half of his keywords SERP's are filled with these so-called "authoritative" websites, that appear to be barely warrant their appearance there.

Your not "sandboxed" at all.

[dburdon]

Sorry I forgot to mention the site is not sandboxed. Its almost a stock excuse for poor optimisation.

[greeneagle]

incrediblehelp:

"Another issue is how many domains you have on your IP's. I would consider getting unique IPs for each of your domains. Right now it seems you have 27 different websites hosted on the IP for www.bigscreencells.com:"

I am inclined to agree with this too. It certainly can't hurt.

Some hosting companies such as GoDaddy offer unique IP address optionally ($2.99/month) for any and every hosted Site, "virtual" included.

Great insurance in the "virtual hosting" world for anyone, at least!

Ken

[greeneagle]

Reiterating:

IMO - The "Sandbox" is nothing but the slag time it takes someone to do adequate competitive marketing (SEM) and finally Rank against competitors in their specific competitive environment after launch, spidering and indexing has transpired!

Yes there is a "percieved sandbox" as Matt indicated in PubCon, but it's just slag time before proving the site has some value to the "Internet Community", before establishing value through relevant SEM.

It takes time to market any and every Site after launch and get competitive results... Let's get over this "sandbox" myth, already!

It's really that simple!

Ken

[virtualtraveller]

There are plenty of cases to show that new sites are sandboxed, usually for a period of about 6 months and you'll know when you are out because you will jump from the 500s to top 100 (if you have been busy getting links).

I've posted several comments about age of links and I'm certain this is also a strong factor in the algo these days. Once you're out of the sandbox you shouldn't expect to suddenly jump onto page one, no matter how many links you have. In fact the more links you have the more Google is likely to keep an eye on you.

I've seen evidence that certainly suggests that the older sites have the best advantage, and have even compared link counts between one our sites (which is trapped on page 2 for the main keyword) and sites in the top 5, some of which have less links! What's more we have put in lots of expensive effort to gain quality links and it makes little immediate difference.

I can only conclude that each new link is given a sandbox of its own and the value Google assigns to it matures gradually with age.

I think that a hypothetical statistics model is possibly created for each competitive keyword whereby the age of the sites, age of links and other factors are measured and an average development time is recorded for the top ranking sites (say, top 100). Any new site acquiring links at a rate greater than this is capped in terms of the link value is should get. This means that if you are a year old and most the sites on page one are five years old, then you just have to be patient as the difference in age diminishes over time. Of course, a site that has been steadily getting quality links will have a better chance of speeding up the 'catch up' time.

Lots of members here have concurred that patience in getting good ranking is essential but few people have really looked into this in any detail or suggested any specific model about age of links.

[ukbrad1980]

Thanks for all the input guys - Everything you say makes good sense. The interlinking was something I didn't really want to drop (was scared it would have too much of a short term negative impact), but you are right in that it's not exactly relevant.

The seperating IP addresses is valid comment too. Our hosting company offers pretty inexpensive additional IP addresses so it's definately worth a try.

Will let you all know how I get on!

Many thanks,
Brad

[greeneagle]

Post Jagger Sandbox Checkup.:O

Ken

[freehits]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

Reiterating:

Yes there is a "percieved sandbox" as Matt indicated in PubCon, but it's just slag time before proving the site has some value to the "Internet Community", before establishing value through relevant SEM.
Ken

I think you just agreed there is an artificial time delay.

"lag time before proving the site has some value"
is pretty much what most people have called a "sandbox".

Since when does time = value ?
unless old sites get a default advantage
(aka sandbox)

[greeneagle]

hoptoo,

That "time delay" I was writing about is simply the time it takes to accomplish adequate time consuming SEM goals.

Are we asking how long it takes for a webmaster to execute the necessary SEM to accomplish payback?

18 month to 2 years is a long time for any competition level if resources have been available!

Ken

[andyorch]

From my experience sandbox times are increasing - maybe this is strongly related to the number of links you add within the first 6 months - who knows.

But inbound links are still way more important than tinkering with content related seo

i give you an example

i had to remove all meta and all content from a site due to a conflict with my business partner. this site still came 3rd in google for a competitive keyword. Google took the info out of dmoz and used it for the title and description of the site. It was ranked 3rd due to the link building that was carried out 2 years previously.

so to the people who go on and on and on in forums blaming peoples lack of seo skills for the poor se results ... explain this