Art of Money out of Google’s Sandbox
Dec 05
Google says that there isn’t such a thing as a sandbox, but as every stats addicted webmaster knows, there is a point usually between 6 and 10 months from its launch, when a website will suddenly receive a huge boost in referral traffic from Google.
Most speculation is that the sandbox is not intentional but just repercussion of how link weight is factored into a sites ranking. For example since the age of a link is a significant factor in ranking a website, it is difficult for new site to get decent rankings since it is impossible for new site to have aged links pointing at it.
All I know is that it is at least the third time now that I’ve had one of my sites, overnight, triple or quadruple the traffic it receives from Google.
My first post on this site was on February 20 of this year, meaning that the sandbox effect lasted just over 9 months [is that a Google joke...maybe they should call it the gestation period rather than the sandbox] almost exactly the same as my other sites.
I guess if there’s a point to this story it is for beginning bloggers and webmasters to realize that time is a BIG part of SEO. Time is a tough one to trick, the only way I can see is to get started ASAP.
What’s funny about Google is, it is also the fastest search engine to deep index and add new pages to its index. So you can do well with individual items quickly but for a site to rank well and achieve its full “power” seems to take about 9 months.
On my blog network, I launched a site on December 1st and on the 4th it received the first referral from Google. The fasted I’d ever seen before that was 7 days on another recent project. But I’m sure that the sandbox effect is real and so if you’re just getting started be patient and realize that you won’t really know how your site is doing until it has been re-born from the Google sandbox.
Jon Symons
Gestating websites…so you don’t have to.
This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.
Does this also apply to the traffic you receive from other search engines, such as MSN?
No, the sandbox effect that I’m speaking of is only a Google thing. I have seen other craziness from MSN and Yahoo! but nothing as consistant as with Google.
I’ve heard about this mysterious concept for quite some time and I’m still not clear on it.
Right now I get about 15 referrals from G a day. Does that mean I’m not in the sandbox? Or will I be out when I see say 100?
BTW, it’s all individual posts. For about 35% of them I rank in the top 10.
Nneka
Nneka…there isn’t really a number, but if you are in the sandbox [and not all sites end up there] when you come out, your referrals from Google will triple or quadruple, so in your case rather than 15 a day, you’d get 60 or more…it’s a good thing. My Alexa rating has gone from 160k to under 117k in the last couple weeks.
Well, I’m looking forward to that jump!