Sandbox

[milvos]

Not to start a debate on whether a google sandbox exists or not, but to the believers, has anyone got a method for checking whether a site is sandboxed. Looking for something which is just abit better than searching for a term and thinking well, I have backward links, content, seo page - why is it not there?

Thanks
Dean

[Banana Man]

If your site is not ranking at all for your main keywords but does rank when you take a random piece of a sentence from your site its a good sign of the good old sandbox. Im a firm believer, i was in it for a couple of months, or at least something that resembled the sandbox.

[milvos]

Yes that is kind of what I am getting, if I search for a random sentence or two will bring the site up nothing major keywords. I guess I will wait and see.

Thanks
Dean

[TrainCons]

Last time I did a design refresh it took google a while to re-index my site using the new content, then I dropped out of their search results altogher for 3 weeks... then my site starting showing up again with my new keywords. Is that an example of being sandboxed?

I'm due for another design refresh. I'm thinking about adding a link to my main page that invites visitors to "preview" my new site design - the real purpose will be to avoid being sandboxed. Once all my new content has been indexed, I'll remove the old content and rename index2.asp to index.asp... anybody know whether this will keep me out of the sandbox?

Michael

[cheesedude]

Not to start a debate on whether a google sandbox exists or not, but to the believers, has anyone got a method for checking whether a site is sandboxed.

Here's a proven method: your traffic from Google drops by 95% or more for no apparent reason. Then you will know you are in the Sandbox.

[cheesedude]

If your site is not ranking at all for your main keywords but does rank when you take a random piece of a sentence from your site its a good sign of the good old sandbox. Im a firm believer, i was in it for a couple of months, or at least something that resembled the sandbox.

I've got 4 sites finished and operational. All 4 have gone through the Sandbox. 2 are out, 2 are still in.

For my site #2, it was put in the Sandbox on April 16th and came out of the Sandbox on October 16th. That's exactly 6 months my traffic from Google was virtually non-existent. I went from a couple hundred visitors per day from Google to 2 - 5 visitors. Now the site gets more traffic from Google than ever before.