I will defend the sandbox effect to my death based on my definition. I get offended when people who I know do not develop, or interact with numerous new sites on a regular basis instantly saying the sandbox is false. In other words, I am annoyed with people who may maintain one or two big sites instead of involved with new sites being launched regularly to get a good idea of the latest effects Google has placed on newly established sites. Keep in mind... I am all for maintaining fewer large sites than creating smaller insignificant sites regularly. However I interact with many different webmasters who create small sites regularly, consulting them and having complete access and understanding of their link building methods.
My definition of the sandbox is a delay with a NEW site ranking on the primary term being targetted from the anchor text from external incoming links. What is weird is, if your site has a unique name that doesn't appear regularly on other sites (ex: something brandable like "Hoppity Woppity.com"), then this "sandbox" effect does not happen.
This "sandbox effect" likely happens due to ONE or ALL of the following...
- Google delaying the benefit of a link. As always the more incoming links you have, the less time it will take to rank.
- Other than the pagerank value of the incoming link always being important (importance may have been changing over the years, this thread is not a debate on pagerank), how topic-related the link is MAY have effect on the sandbox effect.
- As I already mentioned, the term you are targetting. It would be very easy for the google algo to know the difference between a unique site name and a name based on a competitive term. This is why a site with a unique name does not experience the sandbox when ranking on the two keywords making up their unique name.
My proof?
I have had controlled experiments with friends MFA sites.
Example 1: www.socialanxietydisorder.net. It took 9 months for this site to rank on Google for 'social anxiety disorder'. ALL of the incoming links were obtained in the first 2 months since launching. It was not a gradual increase in the rankings. 9 months after the site launched, it suddenly appeared in the top 20 on Google. THEN it has slowly increased in rankings like a normal site since that 9 month mark.
Example 2: www.anxietyinsight.com - Same difference, but only took 7 months to rank on 'agoraphobia'.
Example 3: www.dust-mites.org - Not in the top 1000 results on Google for 6 months. All incoming links were established early on, and no additional ones have been obtained. This site always received traffic from day 1 on obscure random terms related to mites.. even terms that included 'dust mites'. It would receive traffic on obscure terms like "bed dust mites". But when searching on 'dust mites', it wouldnt be in the top 1000. As of the past month (recently), it has been jumping around the top 100. At the time of this post, ranked 101.
Example 4: www.insectidentification.org - Obtained a DMOZ listing almost immediately after launching with the anchor text Insect Identification (among many other links). Took over 6 months to rank in the top 100 on the term 'insect identification'. Then normal, gradual increases in rank happened, now it is #1.
Out of all these sites, insect identification is my best example. It is not an MFA site, and it is not targetting some hugely competitive term. I realize DMOZ isn't everything, so please don't bash me saying "DMOZ links aren't gold stop placing so much emphasis on that." BUT, a DMOZ listing should at least put you in the top 500 on Google fairly quickly for the not so competitive term 'insect identification', shouldn't it? It took 6 months for www.insectidentification.org to crack the top 100 on a not so competitive term. Then it just decided to jump to #1 quickly once it cracked the top 100.
I consider myself a very logical and experienced web developer. I think those who I interact with regularly here would acknowledge my experience. I do not believe in any of the garbage that comes out of WMW.. from the -950 theory, to the "pray to google 7 times a day to increase your rankings" theory. However, wherever the term 'sandbox' came from, I believe the originator of this theory is on to something. Especially when this theory can be tested.
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