The Sandbox Effect: Not a Nice Place to Play

The Sandbox Effect: Not a Nice Place to Play: "Named for the phenomenon of new websites being held back, in the search engine results pages (SERPs) by leading search engine Google, the Sandbox Effect has many website owners upset. When a new website is indexed in Google, it often receives what many observers consider to be a new site bonus. The brand new site will rocket to the top of the SERPs charts for a brief, shining moment. From there, it's all downhill."

Many observers believe the purpose of the Sandbox filter is to discourage unscrupulous webmasters from using practices that are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Some of the techniques that Google is attempting to disrupt are the use of throw away spam sites to build early traffic, and to slow down the purchase of expired domain names to get a jump start from any pre-existing Google PageRank.

One technique, to avoid spending too long in the sand, is to purchase and register a domain name and park it. By placing the domain on a parked basis, some of the sand time will be run through the Google hourglass, by the time your site is ready for launch. During the time period of your parked domain, you can be preparing content when your site goes public.


Conclusion

Google has placed a dampening filter in its search algorithm, which holds back new sites for three or four months, following the initial fresh site bonus.

The so-called Sandbox Effect places new websites into a brief moratorium, where they will not rank well, if they appear at all, in the SERPs.

Because the Sandbox appears to affect every new website, the onus is on the webmaster to plan for it happening to them. To counter the Sandbox, website owners are encouraged to carefully select their launch date to limit the damage.

During the sojourn in the sand, a tremendous opportunity exists to add content and incoming links to your website. That time period affords you the chance to find additional links, optimize your site, and submit to the many Internet directories.

With a little planning, and using your time in Sandbox hiatus wisely, your site can burst forth from the filter to the top of the rankings for your keywords.


NB UK SITE STARTED SHOWING PR 28 April 2004