Getting out of the Sandbox

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Dec 9, 2006

The other day, I wrote an article on how the sandbox works - how it opens up your new site to the possibility of good rankings after about 6 months.

I included a stock photo of a sandbox (we call them a sandpit in NZ), but then I remembered we have just spent the last few weeks building a sandbox for my 1 year old daughter. So in order to justify the use of an original sandbox photo, I need to come up with another sandbox article.

My daughter Lulu getting out of her new sandbox

I think the sandbox concept is great - especially given the rock bottom price of domain names, it's logical that long established sites should be given more trust than brand new ones.
As yet, I haven't found a reliable way of getting out of the sandbox earlier, although I have found that sites with lots and lots of unique content tend to fare better than a static brochureware site.

The technique I have been using does not help you get out of the sandbox quicker, rather it starts the waiting period quicker. If you are looking to actually speed up the sandbox process, doing some link building is always a good idea, though it may or may not help with the sandbox problem.

Finally, a use for the "coming soon" page

When a client asks me to do a site for them, the first thing I do (after they accept the quote) is register a domain and get a basic coming soon page online.
I then point a small number (less than 10) of PR 4 - 6 links at the new site, then sit back and wait for Google to index the site. This should be the first thing you do on any web project if you are interested in getting out of the sandbox early.

Based on the fact that websites can sometimes take a few months to develop, when the site launches, the domain will already be a few months old in Google's opinion, so there will be less waiting time in the sandbox. It's all about making that development time count towards your 3 - 9 months of sandbox time.

It can also be a good idea to create some subpages for your coming soon site too. Simply create some static pages with the same URLs as you intend to use on the real site - I know I will always have a www.domain.com/contact/ page on my sites, so it doesn't hurt to create a coming soon page here as well (or in the case of a contact page, actually put your contact details up there).

Typically, Google should index your new "coming soon" page within a week. This becomes the starting point of your sandbox time.

Sure, this isn't rocket science, but it's a reliable way of artificially reducing your time in the sandbox.

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Tags: sandbox seo sandbox seo

Comments

Aidan Rogers - Feb 20, 2007

I quite often read your blogs and was just wondering, do you still have the same stance on the google "sandbox"? What are you views on "link-aging"? Or do you still believe it is just a probation period on new sites? My site is pretty much brand spanking and for a few months sat at about number 10 on googles SERPs for seo nz. Just today it has dropped 500 places (i know google doesn't care if a eat this week) but I wonder in it is the sandbox effect or some sort of aging filter?
Is it applied to EVER new site?
Cheers
Aidan

Harvey - Feb 20, 2007

I've only got my own sites to go off, but I'm sure the sandbox exists, and the above article makes a good point. Typically, If I have been regularly adding content and building links, I will see a big spike in rankings at the 6 month point. All my coming soon pages have good PageRank, which helps get a site off the ground when you are ready to promote it.

Link aging is a tough one. My thoughts are that links do get better with age. I believe this because I'm struggling to beat a competing site for a client - the site I compete against is ugly, has poorly written content and only a handful of links, most of which are pretty rubbish. My site is far better than theirs, better optimised and standards compliant etc, plus is updated regularly and has more content.

The only thing I can think of that makes them beat me in the serps comes down to older links (3 - 5 years old) vs my brand new links.

Take from that what you will, but I think it's link age playing it's part. It makes sense to value aged links more, because they are harder to spam.

I'm seeing your site again in the serps for "seo nz" so I'm guessing you just experienced a datacenter fluctuation. Happens all the time.

You may be interested to know this site was only launched in Feb 2006, and started appearing almost straight away for "nz seo", "seo nz" and related phrases. Don't expect much traffic from those phrases though
It took almost a year to show up on page 1 of Google (NZ sites only) for "seo" and "search engine optimisation".

Steve Muller - Apr 26, 2007

Is there a concrete way to determine if you are out of the sandbox?

Everyone is telling me that SEO takes 3-4 months and you're saying it could take as long as 6 months to exit the “sandbox”. My site’s PR is currently zero (according to the google green bar), but I'm not sure if I should worry because my site is about 2 months old.

Thanks,

Steve

Harvey - Apr 27, 2007

Hi Steve,
The sandbox prevents you ranking for any competitive phrases, but you should still be able to rank for no-competitive phrases.

Unfortunately, you don't get a friendly email from Google when you are released, but it should be fairly obvious is you are keeping a close eye on the phrases you want to rank for. You wake up one morning, check your rankings and find yourself on page 2 instead of page 12 for the phrase you have been targeting.

If you haven't been keeping an eye on your rankings, it's hard to know when you are out of the box.

My experience is that it takes roughly 6 months, longer if your site is light on content or links. A good site with content, links and traffic could start ranking in a shorter period of time.

Forgetting about the sandbox though, getting new sites to rank well does take time. You are competing with older sites that have older links and more of them. If you rush your links, you can end up wearing a penalty, so it pays to start off carefully. Make sure the site can be found for the long-tail phrases (4 and 5 word phrases that nobody else is bothering with) - proper on-page SEO is the key here..

Harvey.

Steve Muller - May 2, 2007

Okay.

Just yesterday, the little green bar on my google tool bar went from 0 to 2 page rank. Does that mean I'm out of the sandbox or is there no correlation?

The site has been up for roughly 3 months now, but still doesn't rank very well.

Steve

Robert Kramers - May 7, 2008

Im in the same boat Steve. My site just went from a PR 0 to PR 3. and my rank has not changed, it just takes time. I Run a web design company and i had a website before my current one that had a lot of PR2 and PR3 links. My Current site has much more PR4 and PR3 links to it, (Almost Double) and i have pinched a lot of the older sites links to point to my new site, have been doing this for about 3 months, the older site still ranks higher than the new site. Its just a waiting game. it wont happen over night... But it will happen!

maceras - Jul 21, 2008

Your approach is pretty good - except for the fact that new sites do not offer value for google. This is why your seo work and sandboxing issues take that long.What if you create an seo written basic site till the real site gets there? If you point from PR5 sites to a nearly blank site is clearly manipulation rather than preparing seo.

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Getting out of the sandbox