What Is The Sandbox?

The Sandbox is something that is usually only mentioned in reference to Google. And the reason that Google is such a powerful dictator of search engine optimization rules is because for many sites, more than 50% of their traffic comes from Google alone, very often much more.

The Sandbox is also a point of controversy with SEO experts. Some use an example of a nonsense phrase that was built into a series of new websites, and indexed almost immediately by Google to prove that there is no Sandbox effect. But this example is really meaningless, because if you built a site using an otherwise unused term, and then search on that term, of COURSE your site will come out on top, because there is no competition!

The Sandbox is not a place where a new site gets put until it proves itself, it is merely that Google ranks your site at the bottom until there is a compelling reason to move it up in the ranks – this includes inbound links, relevancy, age of the site, etc.

Google guards their indexing protocols pretty tightly, but one thing they seem very concerned with, is indexing sites based on popularity as well as actual content. This means they had to come up with a means of measuring that.

So when you register a new site, they are very reluctant to give you traffic until your site has proven itself, and has some incoming links. They want to insure that you are not building new sites to manipulate them, so they reputedly bury your site until it has proven itself by their rules. All this means is that your site goes to the bottom of the heap. It does not mean your site is not indexed at all.

I say, “reputedly” because some people say there is no delay, that you can get indexed right away with Google if you know how. But 9 out of 10 new sites take 6-8 months to get significant traffic unless they are in a very high demand, but undercrowded niche (RARE!!). Interestingly, Google actually helps perpetuate the myth in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner, by calling their Keyword Research Tool the “Sandbox Tool”.

This delay is what is referred to as the Sandbox. As though you get lost in it and have to sort of sift to the top again. It may also be called “aging delay”.

So it is not unusual for a brand new site to register with Google, get a few immediate hits, and then dive into obscurity for half a year before it resurfaces. This is fairly typical behavior for Google traffic. It often happens something like this on your tracking stats:

Month 1 – Launch and register the site.

Month 2 – Google spiders your index page.

Month 3 – Google spiders about 5 pages of your site.

Month 4 – Google spiders about 20 or so pages of your site.

Month 5 – Google spiders your entire site, and gives you maybe 5 hits.

Month 6 – Google spiders the whole site, and gives you perhaps 50 hits.

Month 7 – Google won't spider unless there have been regular changes, but gives you 1-200 hits.

If you are cross linking, it will grow from there, if not, then it will plateau.

So what do you do about it? As a newbie, there are very limited strategies you can use if you do not want to pay for hits, but here is the other side of it:

MSN and Yahoo give hits right away. They also pay attention to the age of the site, but they are more willing to let a new guy break in.

If you link all of the pages of your site to your home page, or to a sitemap type page that is linked into your homepage, it can reputedly shorten the time it takes for the site to fully index. An XML sitemap created specifically for Google can speed up some aspects of indexing, but WON'T do a lot to overcome the aging delay while they wait to see if your site is a keeper or not.

If you are patient, and understand what is normal, you can use that time productively doing things other than worrying. It may be a good time to start on another site, and you'll see why in a minute.

Now, if you are not a newbie, there are some advantages which can help you get around the “sandbox”.

If you have one site indexed, then you can get another “grandfathered” in. I have done this, and there are three tactics.

First, start linking your new site into your old site(s). This will get them picked up as being legit when you register them. It won't speed things up much, but it WILL speed things up a little.

Second, this is something I cannot prove, but I have build a large number of new sites which were put into my webspace as “addon domains”. A few companies let you put more than one domain into a single hosting account. The second domains are set up as “subdomains”, which still retain the features of an independent domain also. Since the subdomain is set up in a folder in your server space, the search engines index those when they spider your site. They just dig into the new folder too, and get redirected to the new domain – Google especially does this because they will search nearly any unprotected folder on your server. The new pages get indexed right away. I am getting solid traffic on more than a dozen new sites using this strategy.

The third thing you can do, if you don't have hosting that accepts multiple domains, is to set up your new site as a sub-folder on your old site. Wait about 4 months, for it to get fully indexed, and then move it into its own hosting space, under its own domain, with a redirect from the old server to the new. The new domain will get grandfathered in that way too.

Another thing that I cannot prove is that having Google AdSense on your site may help you get indexed better. My sites were getting minimal traffic at one point (I was not actively marketing anything at the time), but within 3 months of installing Google, the traffic had increased by a factor of 10.

All of my new sites are built with Googles in the template. I cannot tell whether that is affecting anything with them or not, because there are multiple factors which could be responsible for them getting indexed so fast. Beware though, if you build a site with Googles in the template, you MUST make sure the pages are complete before you upload it, and that you do not have the ads on any pages that Google forbids them being on.

What I can prove though, is that sites that happen to target an unmet need online will get traffic sooner. You cannot fully find this out through keyword research, because keyword research only shows you what you think to look for. I land on these by building sites around topics I cannot find enough information on myself. I research the topic, then produce a site unlike anything else online, and they do very well, right away.

I feel that the sandbox is a factor with new businesses which are trying to break in with an initial web presence, and for them, it will be harder. Persistence will pay off though, and when it does, you'll have a chance to build new sites and springboard them off the old one.