AIS by Sarah

Google Sandbox - Myth or Real?

December 24, 2005 – 2:16 pm

I've read on forums, argued on forums with one or two people over the Google Sandbox. Does it exist? Or is it just an excuse for site owners and SEO enthusiasts who can't seem to get their new site noticed? Search Engine Watch Forums have had a thread running for a few days which has sparked a lot of comments from either side of beliefs. Even amongst the site moderators there is a split decision between whether it's there or whether it isn't.

Oh sorry, for those who don't know, the Google Sandbox is the nick name for an apparent Ageing delay for new web sites getting listed on Google. Whilst the new sites will be indexed they will not appear for generalised key phrases for around 9 months. Suddenly with no changes people have reported seeing their rankings jump and visitor count in from Google jump after 6-9 months. One reasoning behind this is that I've heard that Google is trying to cut down and prevent the amount of Spam sites getting into their indexes, so therefore any new site is instantly penalised ie. a spam site would not make money off it for at least 9 months and presumably by the end of the 9 months they'll have given up. Other various reasons can be found all over the web and on the thread at Search Engine Watch.

My thoughts on this? I agree with those who believe it's an excuse. Why? Because I've not been affected by it. I work on both old and new sites on a daily basis. Some are mine some are clients. Now despite what I do for a living I do not expect any business from my web site due to the simple fact that I am advertising in a saturated market. My domain has been owned for at least 3 years now (I keep changing business names!), so why do I not rank at the top of Google for "web design in the uk"?? In fact why am I not on the first 50 pages? Simple, because there are far more agencies and people out there doing the same as I do, and the ones above me have a lot more inbound links and standing than I do. I'm not fussed, I have far too much work at the moment to even worry over it! I often read comments on forums as well saying "would you purchase from an 'SEO' who can't even get theirselves ranked highly in the Search Engines?" - again, would I buy from the companies that do? No because they probably charge a fortune! I advertise the services available from my business on my web site for anyone that comes to it - mainly for people that have been referred to it by my clients. I have to have a web site, that's what I do for a living so it's there to demonstrate what's available, explain what can be done, but I've only made sales to 2 random visitors so far. Admittedly I've had 2 other people ask for duplicates of the biggest site I've done to date but I've laughed at them (especially the one in Australia who left a number and no email!!!). But my site is not really there for passing trade. I'm not an exceptionally established company. I have 155 backlinks to it according to Digital Point, most of these are client sites.

So there's an example of a site older than 9 months that doesn't rank well for the most general key phrases (note I still rank well for the phrases I've targetted). At this point you may be thinking, how about an example of a new site that works well…

Tribal Tattoos is now just over a month old. The domain name was bought mid-late October. The site was launched in mid November. Within 48 hours I had the site spidered and indexed by both Google and MSN. Within the 1st week we'd hit the average 70+ visitors, the following week the visitor numbers rose further. This month has seen the lowest number at 67 (on a Sunday) and the highest at 113. The average is around 85-90, various days of the week, especially the weekend, tend to be slightly lower. That's on a web site that has been set up and not touched since due to lack of time. What's the top phrases for visitors?

"lower back tattoos" - 204 search visitors
"tribal tattoos" - 169 search visitors

that's as of today and those figures are for December only (sorry I'm not going to add them all up, I think it proves my point). There are 600+ search phrases in total and Google has sent an average of 830+ visitors to the site this month compared to 733 from MSN and then in 3rd place, 77 from AOL. Also this site was originally set up on the basis of results from MSN so I'm not suprised MSN is working to our advantage. Could there be a lot more from Google? Perhaps. I have these phrases set up on my Digital Point account (Digital Point is a free keyword ranker tool that tracks where your phrases rank in Google, using the Google API tool) and check them on a weekly basis. The Tattoo phrases just seem to be rising, maybe by a few spots, some by a lot more.

Someone mentioned on the SEW forum that maybe people should look at it from the view of a new business starting up. There's not established, their content is possibly lacking and they probably won't have the inbound links that more established sites have. That makes a lot more sense to me than some aging delay in Google's indexing algorithm. How did the Tattoo site manage it? Well apparently it doesn't happen to all web sites, perhaps I was just lucky? Tattoos seem to be quite searched on according to the statistics I researched, so it's a big market. But I still stand by my thoughts, an algorithm cannot let some through and not others, it's a set of rules that every web site has to go through, it doesn't alter just because a site has a red background or 100 more words in its content, an algorithm is not a human it's a computer program. I keep explaining this to work - my script doesn't work one day but fail the next unless human error has caused it to! Only human intervention can change the way the algorithm works. Perhaps these specialists and site owners should stop arguing over it and start putting all that energy into the marketing of their websites instead.

I'd welcome thoughts or own experiences on this.

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