How To Play In Google's Sandbox

By David Wallace - February 09, 2005

The Theory
There has been a theory floating around that Google is now imposing some kind of penalty on brand new web sites or sites that seem to acquire a large amount of links from other sites in a relatively short period of time. The so-called "sandbox" theory suggests that new sites will be added to the Google index and may even show up for obscure searches such as the company/web site name but will not show well for other phrases that are relevant to the site. It doesn't matter if the site is optimized for the search engines either. In fact, those who have optimized their sites can drive themselves crazy making change after change but to no positive avail.

Sandbox or Aging Filter?
So if a site is sent to the sandbox by Google either because it is new or it is participating in mass link building, what is the time frame that must pass before the site is allowed out of the box? Most search engine marketers that have been discussing and analyzing this say about 6-8 months. As for myself, I don't actually believe that Google is sending new sites to a "sandbox" but rather they may be applying some sort of aging filter.

How Do I Play?
So now that we have come to the conclusion that this sandbox, aging filter or whatever you want to call it, actually seems to exist, what can one do that has been affected by it? The answer is "absolutely nothing". That surely is not what many people want to hear and possibly even you the reader question the reasoning of writing an article on the subject if there are no solutions. But wait a minute, there is a solution! It is called patience. Sure that might not be a definite solution to getting one's self out of the sandbox. However it will allow them to keep their sanity and in doing so, to look at some alternatives to marketing their sites until the time period lapses. Let us take a look at some of those alternatives.

Pay Per Click
There of course is AdWords, Google's pay per click advertising program. If you have a new site and are finding yourself caught in that aging filter to where your site will not show well in the Google, why not put aside a budget for an AdWords program? With AdWords, you can instantly gain exposure on Google as well as many search and contextual partner sites. This can bring traffic to your site as a direct result of people searching at Google or one of their search partners such as Ask Jeeves, Netscape, AOL as well as others that display AdWords on their sites.

Sure these will not be the free listings you may get from the organic results of Google but if you watch your bottom line and conversions, you might find that AdWords will bring about a very good ROI. Later on when you start to see your site showing well in the organic results, you can begin to back off of your AdWords campaign. Of course if AdWords is effective for you, you may just well continue both.

Other Search Engines
Don't discount traffic from other search engines such as Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN. If you only focus on Google, you might miss valuable traffic that you can receive from these other sites, all of which do not seem to have any type of aging filters. Besides that, sites that have good "on the page" search engine optimization seem to do very well in these engines.

Take Advantage of Established Sites
One thing we have recently began to test with new sites that we are providing marketing services for is to develop a profile page or pages that will give a brief summary of the client and their product and/or service. These are also optimized to target some of their most important keywords. We will then place this page or pages on an established site such as a directory we own or a case study section on our site - somewhere where it has the possibility of ranking well and sending the client some traffic. When they do finally begin to rank well in Google with their own site, the page or pages are no longer needed and can be removed.

A word of caution here - in doing this we are careful not to simply place duplicate content on another domain. I say that because I don't want people to think I am endorsing duplicate content or mirror sites. The pages or pages that are created need to be unique and not just copies of their own content.

Patience Is A Virtue
All in all, be patient. Don't continue to tweak and adjust your site hoping that you changes will thrust you on to the first page. Don't pull all the hair out of your head, cursing Google because they won't allow your site to rank well. Simply accept the fact that if you have a new site, it will take quite awhile before it will rank well in Google. This will allow you to be more at peace with your marketing efforts as well as have the foresight to look at other alternatives.