Google Sandbox for SEO

By: Phoebe Tiangson

The Google Sandbox is an algorithmic filter designed by Google and implemented around March 2004 with the purpose of weeding out spam sites by placing all new websites under quarantine for a period of assessment.

How Does The Google Sandbox Affect Your New Site?

Although the Google sandbox was designed with the primary aim of targeting spam sites, in reality it affects all new websites. The general consensus in SEO (search engine optimization) circles is that the Google sandbox algorithm functions to prevent new sites from blasting their way to the top of Google (using whatever means possible) and in effect overtaking quality websites that have been around for years.

WHICH SITES GET SANDBOXED?

All new sites are subjected to a period of quarantine.

HOW LONG WILL YOUR SITE REMAIN IN THE GOOGLE SANDBOX?

As far as Google is concerned not all new sites are born equal. Certain factors will determine the length of your website's duration in the Google sandbox. If the keywords your website is targeting are highly competitive then your website will be quarantined for longer. If you think about it, this approach makes sense. Most spam sites have one goal--to make as much money as quickly as possible. So accordingly the average spam site will target big-profit keywords which naturally tend to be more competitive.

Following this thinking, if your website focuses on keywords and markets that are not very competitive, your stay in the Google sandbox will be considerably shorter. Once again, this explains why niche market sites tend to ascend the SERPs (search engine results pages) much faster.

WHAT FEATURES DO SITES IN THE GOOGLE SANDBOX EXHIBIT?

Sandboxed websites tend to be characteristic of the following:

1. Do not appear in the Google Index

2. Have Google page rank without being in Google's index;

3. Have good homepage page rank (4 or 5) but no PR for inner pages;

4. Have good Google page rank (PR) but rank poorly for primary keywords; and

5. Have a good number of inbound links yet rank poorly for primary targeted keywords.

THINGS TO DO WHILE YOUR SITE IS IN THE GOOGLE SANDBOX
Like most other situations in life, here you have a number of choices. You can sulk, fret, stamp your feet and moan and groan that the those tricky Google folk have hijacked your site--or you can get into the swing of things and utilize your time effectively:

1. Go ahead and add quality content to your fledgling site.

2. Work on increasing the number of inbound links (quality links not just any old link).

3. Tweak and improve the SEO quality of your site.

4. Write articles.

The list of things to do while your site is sandboxed is literally limitless. The purpose of doing these things is that by the time you site is released from the Google sandbox, it will rank much better for those competitive keywords you're targeting and will have better SERP (search engine rank pages) listings than your competitor's site that is equally new.

Because, instead of taking the effective action you did (while your site was under quarantine) your competitors spent the entire time fumbling around in the dark wondering just why the heck they couldn't their site indexed by Google, let alone get any PR!

A word of caution though--Do not spend all your time trying to outwit Google. There are plenty of other methods to draw traffic to your site as well as other search engines to woo. Just implement good SEO techniques and with time they will pay off.

HOW TO SHORTEN THE TIME YOUR SITE IS IN THE GOOGLE SANDBOX

Is it possible to cut short the time your site spends in the Google Sandbox? Most SEO experts concede that on average any new site is going to spend at least 3 months in the sandbox.

However the good news is that there're ways around this:

A. Register your domain name for more than one year (spam sites are rarely registered for longer than a year).

B. Upload your site for live viewing as soon as possible even if it isn't ready for prime time (content-wise). Tweak the content later on or on-the-fly. The logic here is that the search engine spiders will crawl your site sooner. What is more, as you perfect and change the content of your site it will register positively to the search engines as constantly changing content (think blog).

C. Maintain good-practice SEO-linking campaigns. By doing this you will be killing two birds with the same stone.

Here let me explain:
THE NEW LINKS AGING FILTER

Other than the sandbox, Google has another filter in place aimed at reducing the effect of newly acquired links until a certain period of time has elapsed. The logic here is that your new inbound links will not be allotted full value immediately in an effort to counter the habit of buying links and other link purchasing schemes that people like you and I participate in to improve our search engine rankings.

This makes sense otherwise anybody with the cash could quickly acquire quite a stable of high page rank links and in effect outrank far older sites on the SERPs. One other thing about link acquisition--When you get links make sure you retain those links even though they aren't apparently registering with the search engines to begin with. What is actually happening (as I just mentioned above) is that the search engines (notably Google) is sequestering your newly acquired links to ensure they are genuine long-term links, not links you acquired for say, one month or so, so as to get quickly indexed.