Today I would like to share my opinion on the Google Sandbox.

First of all, I am very reluctant to use this term in the context of a Search Engine. Before I started working as an SEO, I only knew the term in connection with test platforms for web developers. For example, eBay uses a sandbox to test the API To offer developers the opportunity to create test accounts and test auctions without them appearing on eBay.de.

Under SEO with the sandbox is often understood a devaluation of pages. If pages with certain keywords appear further back in the results than before, this is referred to as a especially for new pages often from the sandbox.

 

From my own experience, I can confirm that several sites that I have edited or managed initially had significant ranking problems, despite excellent SEO, multi-layered Content and clean internal linking. Here was the Ranking from the launch in October 2018 until the middle of March 2019, i.e. almost 5 months. After this interval, impressions rose almost daily - and numerous keywords gradually rose to the top ranks.

 

Incidentally, Google itself has always denied the existence of a sandbox.

But what would be the benefit of a sandbox for Google? One could assume that a new page must first prove itself to be spam-free before it can actually be ranked high in the search results. SERPS appears. This would also make sense, as the real spammers do not immediately use the Traffic would get from Google. Here, however, the problem of recognizing a spam site arises again. By spam sites, by the way, I am mainly referring to sites that have been blocked by SEO Spam-methods try to get links quickly, for example, through special bots.

If you dig a little deeper, however, you can get an idea of the sandbox

For example, if you follow the Twitter statements of the well-known heads of Google a little more closely:

My answer is not to worry that much. The difference between a domain that's six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all. So as long as you've been around for a least a couple months, a few months, you should be able to make sure that you're able to show up in the search results. - John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google

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My answer is not to worry that much. The difference between a domain that's six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all. So as long as you've been around for a least a couple months, a few months, you should be able to make sure that you're able to show up in the search results. -Matt Cutts, Former Head of Webspam Google

That already sounds like a sandbox, however you want to put it, guys.

Be careful with link building for new websites

Imagine such a site. Let's take a serious site on the subject of "private health insurance" as an example. (Incidentally, this is a popular topic for AdSense sites, as the click prices are very high). Now the operator of this site uses a bot that surfs across the Internet and leaves a link to the site on every web form. The bot even uses different link texts and places 100 links in one day.

Let's assume that this page ends up in the Google Sandbox. However, it has the same chance of getting out of the sandbox as any other. Because how does Google recognize that it is a spam page?

On the one hand, you could use the fast Link building mention. In my opinion, however, you cannot recognize a spam page based on a quick link build-up. The Google bot does not visit every page on the same day, so the bot does not know when the link was placed. If we assume that each page is visited once a week on average (this refers to subpages), then the 100 links in the example were placed within 14 days for Google. In my opinion, this is not very unusual and not an indication of a spam site. A well-made Microsite from Nike would probably receive far more natural links in the same time.

The fast Link building is therefore not necessarily an indication of a spam page. But how is Google supposed to recognize this page as spam? Probably not at all. Although I have not yet made excessive use of such practices, I would still be very interested to know whether such pages make it to the top of the SERPS.

But now back to the Google Sandbox

My own experience shows that new pages often appear high up after indexing and then fall a long way back after a few days/weeks. However, after a certain time (often several months), these pages all come back and reappear at the top.

Regardless of whether you want to talk about a sandbox or a temporary devaluation for new sites, this raises further questions for me:

• Why doesn't a new page go into the sandbox immediately?
• What determines how long a page is in the sandbox?
• When comes a page not into the sandbox?
• Are there sites that can't get out of the sandbox at all?

I would be very interested to hear your opinions and comments on this topic.