Are you Google Sandboxed?
What is one of the most important things for an online business? If you ask me having a website would be a good start and once that’s covered I would move on to say that traffic is the most vital element to the success of an online business.
If you’ve been blogging or marketing online for more than 6 months then you may have heard this term time and time again “Google Sandbox” and if you haven’t then I’m glad you’re here because its time that you learn of it. If you’re anything like I was when I started you may cringe at the idea that there is actually a google sandbox out there specifically reserved for sites that google deems as useless. [is that fair?]
If i am building a business online and I’m sandboxed and denied my rightfully deserved rights to organic traffic then I would assume that this defeats the purpose of having business online. If my online business front ends up in the “Google Sandbox” then this probably means that according to Google my site is not acceptable for the mother of the search engines and unless I pay for the traffic I’m screwed.
That’s the Wrong mindset! First of all lets remember that Google is not the only fish in the sea there are other major search engines that will index you and drive traffic to your sites. Granted its understood that Google is the most popular of the search engines and its a huge benefit to be in their index but don’t panic if you feel you’ve been sand-boxed because the world doesn’t end there.
The fact remains that there is no real evidence that this “Google Sandbox” even exists so since its just a theorized rumor don’t even worry about it, however,for the sake of argument and of this post I will share this popular five year old theory.
How and When was this theory born? A few years ago, around 2004.
This idea surfaced because during one of the infamous Google updates of their index results databases, several webmasters took notice to the decline of their site rankings within the search engine results pages for their main targeted keywords or keyphrases. Many sites including the famous ProBlogger was hit with the update declines that fed life to this theory.
With Research a pattern was discovered, and the pattern was tracked down to domain registrations that took place around March of ‘04 - the common trait was that sites purchased after this date range were affected by the “Sandbox Effect”. Why would decline in rank lead to the idea of the existence of a sandbox? because webmasters from the USA to “Tim-buc-To” took note that their sites were ranking poorly even for search terms that they optimized the life out of - it just didn’t make any sense….but with future updates some sites were returned to their original rankings or close to the status they once held….
Either way, its out of your control - you have an idea of what bred life to this theory, now that you know I’ll give you this tool provided by google to determine if your site is indexed. If you note that it has been indexed just continue to work hard on your sites and continue to optimize and market your business or services because with the next google database update you may end up with the rank you are hoping for..
Now go see if your site is indexed: Check My Status in Google’s Index
Another way to manually do this is by going to the search bar and type “Site:http://www.yoursitename[dot]com” <without the quotes.
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It can take awhile to get out of, but it’s a short ‘probation’ period.
Hi Susan, Have you ever experienced a decline in your page rank? and if so how long more or less did it take before you noticed an improvement in ranking and traffic?
I think the sandbox effect is needed especially for “here today, gone tomorrow” websites and blogs. Both my sites are indexed with Google. So now I’m just going to keep with posting quality content and let time handle the rest.
B.M. Garrett’s last blog post..What you should know about skin cancer
I believe Google sandbox really exists.
The reason bloggers think it is a myth is because WP blogs are usually out of the sandbox within days, so they hardy can tell that they were sandboxed. At least that was the trend late 2007 and during 2008.
Another reason, and a way to shorten your sandboxing, is that bloggers almost always use Google’s webmaster tools, submit their blogs, submit a site map.
Take a website that is not a blog AND is not on wordpress AND does not use the webmasters’ tools - it is doomed for the sandbox.
Cheers,
Alex
Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com’s last blog post..Grab a $25 Rebate for PPC-Coach.com, That’s a 50% Discount!