What Do You Do If Your Site Gets Sandboxed?
March 4th, 2008 by CourtA very common question that I’ve been getting a lot lately in the comments deals directly with the Google sandbox. When people use keyword targeting strategies, it seems that they have a very difficult time understanding why Google won’t rank them very well in the beginning. Sometimes this is enough to get people very discouraged so I have been feeling the need to address this issue directly.
What Is The Google Sandbox?
If you ask someone at Google, they will probably tell you that the sandbox doesn’t exist. I can tell you with certainty that it does.
When Google finds a new site, they have no idea whether it’s trustworthy or not. Thousands of new sites appear online every single day, and this creates a very unique challenge for Google. They have to try to filter through all of the spam and garbage in order to maintain the integrity of their index.
Let’s say for example purposes that I create a site about ‘diet lipton green tea’. I dig up all of the information I can find about ‘diet lipton green tea’ - I find all of the health benefits, what’s actually in it, whether people like it. Maybe I even call up someone at Lipton to discuss the green tea sales numbers. If I go all the way and create a very helpful site that is full of good information about ‘diet lipton green tea’ and do some good link building, I will probably be ranked #1 for the keyword.
Now let’s say that a spammer launches a brand new site and fills it full of nonsensical information about ‘diet lipton green tea’. Using spammy methods he’s able to create more content and links in the first week than I can do in the first six months. Does his site legitimately deserve to be ranked over my site?
To protect their search engine from ranking new sites that aren’t particularly valuable, Google created the sandbox. This gives an automatic decrease in search engine rankings to the new site, while Google determines whether it’s spam or legit. If the site is legit, it will come back and re-achieve its regular rankings after the sandboxing period. If it’s a spam site, Google will toss it aside and likely remove it from their index.
Does Google Sandbox Every New Site?
No, Google does not sandbox every new site. Some keywords have very little competition and in that case Google needs more pages and sites related to that keyword for their search results. If you happen to start a site that targets a keyword of that type, you may be able to avoid the sandbox with that site.
How Long Does The Sandbox Last?
Usually the sandboxing period lasts about six months. With my sites, I’ve seen it last up to a year and I’ve seen it last less than two months.
What Do You Do If Your Site Gets Sandboxed?
You wait. When the site comes out of the sandbox you will get ranked in a great location, from one day to the next. My ‘colorado lasik‘ site is a perfect example of this. Right now that site is sandboxed so I’m playing the waiting game. This is enough to really bother and discourage some people. It doesn’t bother me at all. I have sites that go in and out of the sandbox all the time and it’s part of the natural process. Not too long ago HowToMobile.com came out of the sandbox and appeared suddenly on page 2 for ‘motorola cell phones’. Now I can work on improving that ranking. Here in a few months my lasik site will probably appear on the first page for its keyword and I can make money on it for the next twenty years.
In order to win with internet marketing, you have to win the mental game. Think about your income for the next 10 years - is it really going to matter that you got delayed for a few months? If your site gets sandboxed, buy another domain and get some more work done. You’ll be glad that you did when your sites start coming out of the box.
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March 4th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Great article Court!
I agree completely with you. I have had sites that appeared on page 1 of the SERP’s right after I created them, only to disappear a few weeks, or days later.
Some of them are still sandboxed, but a couple are out now. You can definitely tell when they come out of the sandbox.
The best thing I have found to do while a site is in the sandbox is to write more content and create more sites.
No sense waiting around for one site to come out!
March 4th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
My thoughts exactly Elliott! I see it as a mental game. You have to keep believing that you’ll make money with that site. I have done it enough times to know that sites come out and I hope that people are able to keep working even thought the results are delayed.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Thanks for that comment. I’ve had a lot of sites for many years but experienced my first round of noticeable sand-boxing last week on the newest which is 8 months old.
Now I am more aware of the mental game that Court is talking about.
Patience. Thanks.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I too can tell you for certain that the sandbox exists. When I first launched my blog, I couldn’t get indexed on anything to save my life. Once I had a couple of months under my belt, I started indexing well and sometimes within hours. Very good post here. I don’t think that I have ever read about this any where else.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Yes the mental game is the hardest part for me to deal with. I am a person who likes instant results. That way I know whether I am succeeding or failing right away.
I think a lot of people give up for that very reason. You have to be dedicated and willing to put in a lot of work knowing that you might not see results for months.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Great job explaining the sandbox phenomenon.
(Anyone who claims it doesn’t exist has never tried to launch a web site with competitive keywords in the domain name.)
My domain name has two “hot” keywords. “Niche” and “Marketing” and as a result, it spent the first 9 months in the “sandbox”. During that time, if you typed in the URL, Google would respond with a “huh”.
Frustrating… but because it was a blog, I used that to it’s advantage to try to build traffic while I waited for admittance to the party.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
What kind of revenue stream do you get from coloradolasiksurgeryguide.com? I don’t see any ads on it. Or do you bring the ads back one it is out of the sandbox?
March 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I can’t put ads on that site right now BudgetBoy because every time I write about it here it gets a bunch of extra traffic that doesn’t click ads. This kills my click-through rate and places my Adsense account in danger for smart pricing.
If that wasn’t the case, it would be perfect for Adsense and that ads would be there now.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
[…] Read the original here: What Do You Do If Your Site Gets Sandboxed? […]
March 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
If your site has been sandboxed, I assume it’s still fine to be linkbuilding in the meantime? Or does that displease the Google deity?
March 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
It’s ok to link build Tuppy. You just have to recognize that the results aren’t going to be there for a while.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Makes sense, thanks.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Kind of interesting. My pages are there in google, but for some reason my page rank is 0. I have no idea why or whether this is temporary. I do not think I have done anything to upset the big G.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Tom, your pagerank probably is zero, because you don’t have enough links to your website. The fact that you pages are in Google’s index has nothing to do with this.
@Court
I really appreciate the fact that you share you websites, because this really gives a good insight in making money online. However, I’m going to warn you, because of a sentence in Google’s guidelines:
“You are not allowed to make websites with only purpose to put Adsense on”. I lost my Adsense account with that stupid sentence!
I must say that your sites contain some content than mine, but there is a high degree of “Made for Adsense” on your howtobmobile.com.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I notice this comment hasn’t been responded to and it worries me. Any response Court?
March 4th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Nuker I’m not on the site 24 hours per day. Please don’t read into it just because I haven’t responded yet.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
For that reason I tell people to use real content on the sites. HowToMobile.com has tons of pages of relevant content, in fact it has over 100 posts of pure content related to cell phones and using them.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Yes, I know, I examined the site completely
The only thing that bothers me: where does Google draw the line in your ad placement. If you have “tons” of sites like this, Google might think you are doing this, because of the Adsense ads.
In my opinion, it’s really difficult to draw a line between a heavily Adsense optimized site (like yours), and a MFA site (with some content).
I would love to see a post from Google, or from you, with insights on this matter
March 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Ask yourself whether you are providing something of value. Google doesn’t make their determination by the placement of the ads.
If you want to give me the URL of the site that got you in trouble, I could probably tell you what’s wrong with it. My suspicion is that you have very little real content there. This is what gets you in trouble.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:00 am
There were a lot of URL’s and I know that I deserved a ban, so there is no point in telling. Now I’m using them for affiliate offers, but I quit making MFA’s site a while ago.
I’m providing real value now
March 4th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
But wouldn’t it be better to try and avoid the sandbox effect in the first place? My understanding of the sandbox is that it only happens if google observes too many incoming links (that do not look natural) in a short space of time. Hence, would it not be better to build your links slowly and naturally and avoid the effect totally.
Ofcourse, I may have grabbed the wrong end of the stick totally and am speaking a load of sh*te, in which case ignore me
March 4th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Of course it would be better to avoid the sandbox, but unfortunately it isn’t that simple.
Your statement that the sandbox only happens if Google observes too many links isn’t entirely accurate. While that concept can help with some keywords, Google sandboxes MOST sites that target some keywords.
You are also going to have another conflict with that strategy. If you build them too slow, you will never catch up to the sites that are in front of you.
I wish that there was a way to simplify this concept but it is just plain complicated.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
You are so right about the 6 months meaning nothing in the long run.
All businesses hit lows and highs. You just have to press on.
AL
March 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Does the sandbox apply to the entire site, or particular pages?
I was playing around with the keyword snipping theme, and I targeted a pretty solid keyword. Was up to page 4 in 7-8 days. Then out of no where, my site disappeared from the results.
I have individual posts that rank well for keywords I target with them. But the home page still seems sandboxed.
I get 200 visitors a day from google, but few land on my homepage.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Usually Justin the sandbox hits you hardest on the homepage, but affects your entire site.
Your question brings up a very good point. You can still get decent traffic with a sandboxed site. Google still needs content for certain keywords so if you write about those keywords you will still get traffic.
I would imagine that when you’re sandboxing is over, you should have 600+ visitors without doing any additional work.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Thanks for the reply Court.
I’m glad you wrote this, cause I had been a little concerned, but I know you always say not to get discouraged.
Once a week or so, I just do some keyword research on a long tail keyword that is related to my primary keyword, and write a post focused on it.
Have posts within the first 30 results for about 10 different keywords doing that. Now it’s just a waiting game. And letting the domain age a bit. Only 2 months old right now.
Random question:
Why don’t you use many meta tags?
I know your homepage has the keyword and description, but this post is only showing the description tag.
Any reason you don’t use the robot tag, or any of the others?
March 5th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Google doesn’t even consider meta keywords anymore Justin. I don’t have the need to regulate how any search robots crawl my site so there isn’t any need to use a robots meta tag.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
One way around the sandbox that I’ve found is to work on long tail terms when your primary keywords aren’t getting your site to show up well in search results. It isn’t as common that you’ll be sandboxed for these terms. That way you’ll get a trickle of search traffic as you go and, with any luck, be ready to roll when you come out of the sandbox.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Court, this comment by Frank C makes sense to me and also raises a question. When you get sandboxed, are you sandboxed only on a particular keyword? or do you also get sandboxed on a group of keywords related to the one you are targeting?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:05 am
From what I observed “it depends” because it seems that the sandbox isn’t just a single on/off switch but a series of several algorithms and flags that work together to determine the severity of the sandboxing.
You can get a site so sandboxed that it never shows up well in virtually any search because you’re using mostly what Google considers spammy keywords or techniques. In other cases, you might get sandboxed for one high competition term but you can still place well for lower competition terms.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am
That’s right Frank, well said.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Thanks Frank C and Court for taking the time to reply. Appreciate it a lot.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Thank you again for the encouragement. I got lucky with my first snipe, I actually jumped up in the rankings quite quickly, and I haven’t been sandboxed yet. Had I been, I probably would have been way discouraged but a post like this really would encourage me to keep sniping and writing content.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I had the same thing happen to me. I was showing up great for certain keywords. Then I vanished! I’m glad I saw this post, it makes me feel better.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Thanks Court for that post. Sometimes things seem quite complex. At first my site was doing very well for most of its keywords then suddenly it dropped in rankings. I guess we should keep building links and adding content till the site is out of sandbox. It could shorten the time in the sandbox.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Thanks for the advice. For a newbie, seeing your site up there in the ranking then suddenly gone is really discouraging. It raises a lot of question in your head. Is it because of the new plugin I added? Is it because of the linkbuilding strategy I used? So many questions pop up in your head that you sometimes blame yourself when in fact your site was sandboxed with no fault on your side.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:39 am
That’s interesting. People are always talking about this Sandbox but as you say, it cant affect all sites as there’s so much proof out there of new sites ranking very well quickly. Michelle MacPhearson is promoting a new product of hers and one of her promo videos shows a brand new domain ranking at position 5 for her chosen keyword in 3 days.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Great post Court,
Like you say, we shouldn’t worry about the box and just keep writing. BTW I just moved another 2 notches with my site.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Good advice. Some people worry so much about the Sandbox, they forget to concentrate on their blog and SEO activities.
March 5th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Hi Court
Great timing as always…
We have a couple of sites one is French…com and the other is Spanish…com.
Both sites constructed on same principles - the French site is doing well in the SERPs, Spanish is looking Sandboxed.
The dilemma is that we have a joint promotion planned but are not sure whether the joint promotion could bounce one out of the Sandbox or bounce the other one in!
What do you reckon?
March 5th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Well it won’t help the Spanish site to get out, that’s for sure. Getting out of the sandbox has more to do with time than tactics. I probably would stay away from associating the two sites together while one is in the sandbox.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:11 am
I quite like the phrase sand box for this phenomenon. Your explanation is also very lucid and to the point. Thank you.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Court, very interesting indeed.
A question, if one has a new site, let/s use your lasik example, and if you do not put Adsense on it but do put an Affiliate advertiser’s link, will the site still likely get sandboxed if keywords are in the url?
March 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
The sandbox doesn’t have anything to do with Adsense Dick. If it’s going to get sandboxed, it will get sandboxed regardless of your method of monetization.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Court,
Any idea why new sites bounce around in the search results from page 2 to page 4 and then drop out of the results entirely?
It seems like whenever I make an update to the site it shoots back up to page 2 and then slowly fades back down. Is this caused by the sandbox?
March 5th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
That’s because the site has very little authority. When you click the publish button, the pings go out and you get some decent links from Technorati’s (and other blog search engine’s) tag pages. Then over the next few days other people use the same tags and your links get pushed deeper and deeper into blog search engine listings where the pages and links aren’t as strong.
This phenomenon actually has nothing to do with the sandbox!
March 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Hi Court, you say after the sandbox period a legit site will rank well but a spam site will get dropped. How does Google actually determine what is spam and what is not? Cheers.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Usually they will look at the site and decide whether it provides value or not. This means the site needs to have pretty solid content.
If you throw together a bunch of garbage that doesn’t make sense or scrape content from other sites, that would be spam.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Do you mean a real person actually looks at it? I never realised that, I just presumed it was all automated.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
[…] Check out Court’s post: What Do You Do If Your Site Gets Sandboxed? […]
March 6th, 2008 at 4:15 am
A very common question. And the most common answer I have heard to it is create good quality backlinks. That should get it out sooner.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Court,
Awesome post. The sandbox exists like you said and SO many people don’t have patience, thats why I LOVE this field because 99% of us hate waiting, we want things now.
If people could only wait a few months, the earnings can be endless for years. Keep up the great work!
March 12th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
thanks court,realy great article
March 15th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Court,
Amazing timing you have with this article. It came at a time when I think I am in the “SBox” and wonder if when you are in the box do you sometimes jump in and out or are you out for sure. My site was not in the top 1000 for a while and I assumed it was in the box but jumped to 7xx for one day and now is gone again. Is that a sandbox thing or possible something else?
March 19th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Best post of the year for bloggers! I’m going to print this out and put it up on my wall to reference it.
March 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Does Google ever apply the Sandbox to existing sites? We have found that Google has slowed down its indexing of our blog over the past week after 3 years of indexing it just about every day. It just so happens that we’ve actually picked up the pace and are now posting about twice a day instead of just once. Also, it’s no longer indexing every post. In Google Webmaster we got this message:
“We’ve detected that Googlebot is limiting the rate at which it crawls pages on your site to ensure it doesn’t use too much of your server’s resources. If your server can handle additional Googlebot traffic, we recommend that you choose Faster below.”
TypePad says this is nonsense because they have plenty of bandwidth.
Any ideas? Is it time we submit a sitemap? We never seemed to need one before.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:48 am
[…] thought your site was sandboxed more than […]
May 20th, 2008 at 10:17 am
[…] failing to get ranked by Google. I’ve come to the conclusion that my site has possibly been sandboxed by Google. I know I’m a newbie blogger and that my site logo is a baby, but enough […]
July 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
[…] about one of my Adsense sites and how just a month ago it was my most profitable and then it got sandboxed. I did everything I could to prevent it from ending up there, but it was a new domain and there was […]
January 19th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I was ranked nr 2 for the keywords “I am bored” two days ago.
But now all of a sudden, it does not even appear in the first 10 search pages.
This is helpful to me, thanx, now ill just wait and see what happens.
June 21st, 2009 at 7:53 am
This may be a silly question, but how do you actually determine if a site is sandboxed or not? I’ve read through the post and all the comments and haven’t been able to spot an answer to that one.
Is it just that the site is not ranking as well as you think it should? If so, that’s very subjective…
December 26th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I’m curious as well as to how you know you’ve been sandboxed. Do you just see your site in one place one time and then it is ‘gone’.
January 30th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Hey, thanks for mentioning the longterm ascpect of the business. Sometimes I have problems to stay motivated