The Sandbox Effect: Not a Nice Place to Play - What is the Sandbox Effect?
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The Sandbox Effect appears to be a search ranking damping filter, applied by Google, to sites for their first two to four months after the initial launch "fresh site bonus". The bonus for brand new sites is to appear very highly in the SERPs for a short time, based on Google's preference for fresh content.
As formerly new content ages slightly, the Sandbox filter kicks in. That is the Sandbox Effect. The average length of time for a site to remain trapped in the sand is about ninety days, although stays in the holding pattern lasting four months, are not uncommon.
Most sites appear to share the damping down effect, regardless of keyword category. The Sandbox filter appears to apply to all sites, whether or not they have many incoming links or not. Having well themed links appears to make little difference either. Content rich sites also get mired in the quicksand. Because of the near universality of the Sandbox, it must be part of Google's algorithm.
What is the Purpose of the Sandbox?
Many observers believe the purpose of the Sandbox filter is to discourage unscrupulous webmasters from using practices that are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Some of the techniques that Google is attempting to disrupt are the use of throw away spam sites to build early traffic, and to slow down the purchase of expired domain names to get a jump start from any pre-existing Google PageRank.
Short-term link renting and placement, until more permanent links are added, will not provide much benefit for a new site. The possibility also exists that Google doesn't give full PageRank benefit during the first few months that a site is indexed. The non-crediting of PageRank form of dampening effect would lower the value of incoming links to expired domain names.
Such a scenario would logically follow, if Google is attempting to prevent widespread purchase of expired domains. The Google toolbar might read PR7, for example, but the algorithm could credit zero PageRank value to the site's search placement. That, of course, would be a rather extreme position for Google to take on the matter.
Another practice Google may be discouraging is spam sites. If a pure spammer can't rank well within the first few months of operation, they may close their spam site down. Discouraging spammers has long been a Google goal.
Any allegedly good intentions on Google's part, however, sideswipe sites that are employing nothing against the guidelines as well. Many webmasters, especially those entirely oblivious to search engine optimization entirely, often are very confused by what has happened. They see good rankings in Yahoo and MSN Search, for example, and think they are not included in Google's index for some reason. Many others mistakenly believe that they have unknowingly triggered a Google penalty.
Another practice Google may be attempting to dampen is the purchase of links to gain initial PageRank. The people at Google may feel that a site should develop natural linking over time. They may not consider purchased links to be part of that natural website evolution. On the other hand, sites with only a few natural links, experience the same Sandbox dampening effect.
It is entirely possible as well, that a website is not placed in the Sandbox, but rather it's the links that are being monitored. The algorithm could consider the age of the links, their source website, the range of Internet providers hosting the links, and the overall link diversity in general. Either way, the result is the same. The website fails to rank as highly as expected.
Next: What to Do while Stuck in the Sandbox >>
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