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Hello,
My newest site was started this past June, has about 140 inbound links (according to Yahoo) but is still ‘sandboxed’. The way I know is that I can search for specific combinations of words in my site in quotes and as long as there are ANY other sites with this same combination of words, my site appears at the end of this list of search results–even if the query only produces 5 or 10 sites.
I have used sitemaps –site is fully indexed–, descriptions are good, no URL-only pages, but NO GOOGLE TRAFFIC.
End of January makes 9 months for this site in the sandbox and I was wondering have any of you started new sites in the last year or two and how long were they ‘sandboxed’?
Did you do anything special to ‘get them out’ so to speak?
what are you keywords
Sorry mate.
When I started google wasn’t a major force in search engines and the “sandbox” wasn’t a twinkle in their mathematicians eyes …
:shhh:Hi,
I have a web site (affiliate, not gambling related) that I started from scratch 9 months ago. Within 4 months Google upgraded it from PR0 right up to PR4. Google has indexed one-third of all the pages so far. At the moment the web site has over 7,000 inbound links. But- no traffic from Google! Maybe 1-2 hits a month, that is it. All visitors that the site gets are coming from Yahoo and MSN (~50/50). So I assume the site is still in the sandbox. I must also admit that I neglected the site within the last couple of months, maybe it plays role, too.Same here, I think G needs at least 1 year to handle your site “serious”. On SEO forums there is a theory that it could be lasted now 2 years (considering that the top sites in the serps are more than 2 years old.) PR has nothing to do with position, some of the top sites in G have very low (2-3) PR.
For some weeks now I got some visitors from G (about 3-4 daily), but not from the general search page but the picture search.
Maybe it will climb up with time
Our site is exactly 12 months old, has a PR4, 10,000+ backlinks in Yahoo, and still very much in the Google Sandbox. I have heard of other sites getting out of the sandbox in a resonable amount of time via the SEO forums, but am wondering if gambling related sites are given more scrutiny by Google, meaning that the filters you have to trip are more difficult than they are for other industries. Just a theory, but I fully expect another 6-12 months in the sandbox, of course I could just be jaded about that.
From my experience it’s 3 years.
Hi Antoine—>
You and I used to email back in the late 90’s when I got into casino aff marketing for the first time, but I doubt you would remember
. It was right around the time you had that issue with your partner–ugh! But it seems like you have bounced back excellently!I kind of wish I didn’t sell out and take the hiatus because things are so much tougher now. I am trying to put a positive spin on the whole sandbox issue, like it will make the sites in the index much better because only those of us who are serious will continue working on these sites for years without the Google rewards–thank God for MSN and Yahoo–AND I believe that this Sandbox effect is making the sites that we have that are now OUT of the sandbox much, much more valuable to those of us who may decide to sell in the future.
People who want to break into this industry nowadays can either 1) Develop, develop and wait wait wait or 2) Pay one of us a LOT for a non-sandboxed site.
Also, I am experimenting with a new technique where I am am creating a new site using ONLY javascript re-directs for all casino links. Its based on a theory I have that Google Sandboxes sites based on the nature of outbound links it follows from our sites and NOT on the content. Googlebot does not follow javascript re-directs. I will let you all know in about 6 months the results of this little experiment. Has anyone else tried this?
Anyway–3 years is a long time to wait–I was kind of hoping 18 months would be the max for my latest site. I have also heard that it is pretty obvious when a site is released from the Sandbox as there is a VERY NOTICEABLE spike in traffic from G and its affiliates like AOL.
Any more comments?
My site flew out of the sandbox after around 9 months.
I should probably have clarified my post but I was rushing and was on my way out when I made my last post. From my experience it takes different amounts of time to get out of the sandbox depending on the industry and the competitiveness of the keyword. For keywords like casinos and online casinos I have seen up to 3 years. For less competitive terms I have seen as low as 1 year.
Truth is I dont think google is the traffic goldmine that everyone claims it is so I dont even worry about this search engine. I target yahoo and msn.
I’m not sure if the sandbox is related to outbound links. I have websites that have no affiliate links on them that are still in the sandbox. Sometimes the sandbox exists for far longer than it should for how competitive a certain keyword is. I might be in the minority but I think that after a certain while, once incoming links, on page seo, etc is factored, there’s a huge randomness factor in which websites rank, and how high they rank. The only thing that can be done at this point in build more websites. It’s frustrating.
The one thing that I have noticed of which is not important is comtent. Dont waste your time on it until you have a website ranking. This was my biggest initial mistake, i wasted too much time on creating content for a minority of websites. Only bother with this once you get traffic.
As for selling out… I’m sure you can make a comeback. The same set of skills is required. SEO is just as easy it just takes more patience. I still dont have the skills that most webmasters have, I cant program, not even html, I cant web design properly, etc
Just build websites and dont worry about google for now.
Antoine,
That seems to be the approach–I am building 3 separate websites targeting different topics (one website is on slots/video poker–this is the one that’s 9 months old, well develped but still in the Box, one is on general gambling/online casinos (just started) and one is on poker (3 months old)) each on a different server, hosted in a different country!)
Yes, I pretty much agree with everything you said here–could you just clarify what you mean by: “Dont worry about content?” It seems that my ‘content’ is what is getting me ranked well in MSN and to a lesser degree, Yahoo.
I think MSN focuses more on content than links…
Yahoo is a pretty good mix of content and links
Google is all about links and links only.Comments?
What I mean is have content on the index page (that is the page you want to get ranked for anyway) and maybe 4 other pages, but dont bother creating 100s of pages of content.
At least that’s my approach and it seems to work for me.
Antoine
There are a number of valid and profitable business models.
Antoine has developed his for a long time and is very successful with it.
I think that too much growth too quickly would look “unnatural”. I don’t follow all the SEO trends, just the basics, and google likes natural growth.
I have never been in the sandbox, so I really don’t know how to get out. But I imagine google watches the sandbox to see what “tricks” are employed and uses this to adjust their algo.
Lots of people in the box will use every trick in the book to get out – what a treasure trove for google to watch.
I’ve one site that hasn’t made it out for 22 months and counting!! I had another one that made it out last month, albeit in a small way, after 15 months.
The sandbox has only been in existence since the early part of 2004, so 3 years in the sandbox at this point would be impossible since it has only existed for 20 or 22 months. It is possible you might not have been ranking prior to the sandbox, and from what I understand it is possible to trigger the sandbox at anytime, so maybe that is where the 3 years comes from.
In any case, there are certain triggers for starting and ending the sandbox, the problem is only Google knows what the triggers are. Webzcas, what were you doing that got you out of the sandbox in 9 months? Some theories I have that might help is achieving a DMOZ listing, buying a Yahoo Directory listing, and registering your domain for at least 5 years. Did you do any or all of those?
As for the Javascript re-directs, that goes explicitly against Google’s webmaster guidelines and they are taking steps to ban sites that use those types of tactics. Just read Matt Cutts blog for more evidence of this. It may take awhile for Google to catch it, and possible they never would, but it is still a risk if you are in it for the long run.
