Tuesday, January 13, 2009

How Long does the Google Sandbox Last

By Brent Sweet

If you have ever read anything on search engine optimization or tried it, chances are you have been told about the famed Google Sandbox. The fact is nobody at Google has ever admitted that it exists, and nobody really has proof. It is believed by some that Google has some sort of filter that prevents websites from being ranked good when they are new, to prevent spam sites.

Does it exist? I dont really know. The only way to tell is to do such good optimization that it would put your site at number one in a single day. I am pretty sure that nobody can do that.

My thing is I had a site that got to the first page of Google for a competitive word in less than thirty days. I will tell you that about 2 weeks after registering the domain I was indexed at about 110 and then I jumped to 40. Is that the sandbox? Maybe. But the key is 2 weeks after that I was at number 10. I think that may have been a result of increased optimization efforts, not a sandbox.

My point is, that yes it may exist, but it is easy to get a first page ranking in about 30 days. If you are so good that you are optimizing where you should be above that, but are not then maybe there is. My point is that my site was on page 1 of Google before I was even indexed in Yahoo, so I dont believe there is a sandbox per say.

I think the sandbox is the fact that it takes a little time to outrank the sites that are older and have been ranked for a while. I mean to get a top ten ranking, you have to knock someone else off!

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