Google SEO and the Sandbox Effect

Do not expect to see good stable rankings in Google for new websites. The best strategy is to finish all the on-page optimization and sit back. Keep building relevant links to your site slowly but constantly. We believe that a flood of link exchanges could raise flags as well. Consider doing a press release for your new site. Press releases can create new backlinks as well as drive visitors directly to your site from publications that carry your press release.

And keep in mind: Google is not the only search engine!

We hear of many webmasters who publish a site under a new domain, get (sometimes) decent Google ranks and then disappear. What is happening?

Website Aging

No matter how much content, good design and optimization is put into a site, good stable ranks are not happening in Google for newcomers. It is a pretty well accepted theory that the number one search engine is keeping recently published sites in the sandbox, unable to break into the top positions. Search engine optimization professionals have to deal with their clients' frustration and explain what is going on.

Why Is the Sandbox Effect Used?

The theory behind this technique is sound. In the past, webmasters and some SEO companies would create multiple domains to spread the odds of one or more sites to break through the ranks and quickly get results. This practice created a lot of very similar or duplicate content that only cluttered search results, making the search experience frustrating. Instead of tracking down domains with very similar content and deciding what to exclude, Google figured that it would be much easier to discourage the practice at its roots. There would be no point in creating multiple sites if months had to go by before seeing any progress.

How Long Does It Last?

From our own experience, we see aging results between 6 to 10 months. Of course this could be changing at any time.

It is important to be patient. Conduct a thorough search engine optimization and link strategy and wait. Changes made while in the sandbox will not likely affect rankings much.

What about MSN and Yahoo?

As far as we can tell, there is no sandbox for Yahoo! or MSN. We are tracking a couple of fairly new sites that are doing well in Yahoo! but not in Google or MSN. We truly believe that MSN is changing constantly to become what Google is and possibly even surpassing the #1 search engine in user friendliness and quality of results.