The Google sandbox is Google’s much loved (oops, did I actually say that, I meant much maligned) filter mechanism which keeps new sites from ranking really well or even moderately well for their chosen keywords and keyphrases for up to a year (sometimes longer). These new sites can be found when searching for their exact names or URLs, but for anything more generic than that they are likely to appear lower than 100th position.
As far as ways of avoiding the Google sandbox go, it is generally accepted that it cannot be avoided altogether but that there are certain things that can be done which should minimize the time that a site has to spend in the sandbox. Emphasis is placed on the ’should’ as you can see, this is because nobody except the engineers working on the Google algorithm really know how the sandbox works, how it can be beat, how its effect can be minimized etc. The webmaster and SEO community can only try and make some really good guesses based on such things as experiments, research, academic type white papers, filed patents, etc.
Anyhow I’m a member of the webmaster and SEO community so here’s some of the things I believe may help with the effect of the sandbox. These are things which should be done before the site is ‘launched’ proper. Firstly the idea of the sandbox filter is to prevent spam sites appearing in the results pages, now spam sites by their very nature are ‘come and go’ type sites which aim to ‘get in and get out’ as quickly as possible, with their spam/scam generated profits of course. Therefore these sites generally only register domains for one year as anything else will just be a waste as the domain will most likely be blacklisted (and thus become useless to the spammer) within that first year of registration. It is for this reason that I believe that registering a new domain for long periods (say maybe 5+ years) appears to tone down the likelihood of that domain becomming a spam site which will deteriorate the quality of Google’s search results.
Now we know Google has access to domain name registration data as it became a registrar in early 2005 and then when they filed ‘United States Patent Application 20050071741‘ (highlight ‘domain’ with your Google toolbar and get reading) my mind was made up that somehow Google had to be using domain name registration/expiration dates to add or subtract relevancy points for websites. Spammers would clearly not register domain names for longer than a year, two at most, but legitimate websites which are in for the long haul would. One comes to the logical conclusion then that Google would see sites with longer registration periods as less likely to be spam sites and thus place them in the sandbox for a shorter period of time. I’d therefore recommend registering new domains for at least 5 years. To prove that I practice was I preach, check out the record expires date on akamarketing.com’s whois entry. The akamarketing.com website was of course not in the sandbox at this time but it does prove that I believe in the whole domain data being used thing.
The next point is one I touched upon in an earlier post about SEO podcasts and it is this; as soon as you know what domain you want for your new site register it, as soon as you register it put something up on the web. Do this regardless of what stage the sites design, development or funding is at, all you basically need is three or four pages of half decent content. These few pages should have no regard for design, layout or aesthetics and should contain only the content itself and then links to the other pages in keyword rich text. A discounted host is fine to use if you don’t want to be paying standard prices for the hosting of a skeleton site while your ‘real’ site is still perhaps four of five months away from completion
After the three or four raw content pages are up head on over to our Google sitemap generator and create an XML sitemap for your site and then submit it to Google sitemaps located at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps. Google has of late been very quick to index new sites through their sitemaps service. Keep an eye on your account and as soon as anything is returned for a site:www.yourdomain.com search the countdown to when you will ‘leave’ the sandbox has begun. This means that when you finish your ‘real’ site (complete with full design, development and proper content) a couple of months of your ‘parole period’ in the sandbox will have elasped, that can’t be bad.
A final method which should help you minimize your time in the sandbox is to get links for your site. The difficulty here of course is that your ’site’ is not really a site yet, it’s only a couple of plain pages put up so Google had at least something to spider and because of this people will not want to exchange links with your site and directories like dmoz will certainly not want to give you one of their precious listings either. A solution to this then in my opinion to post often on some popular webmaster forums such as www.sitepoint.com and forums.digitalpoint.com making sure to leave your keyword rich signature which points to your domain in every post. This is a slow but steady way of building up links and should help (you might learn a lot along the way too). Of course if you happen to already own a network of established sites it is a good idea to link into the new domain as soon as the ’skeleton’ version is up, avoid what’s known as excessive crosslinking though and keep it as natural looking as possible.
In closing then a couple of things I recommend to do before your website is ready which should shrink your time in the sandbox are; registering domain names for longer periods, putting your domain live with very very basic content and submitting a Google sitemap for it (pretty much as soon as you register it) even if it’s not finished (any content at all will do at this stage really, just give the Googlebot something to eat) and when you get a break from designing and developing your new site participate in some busy forums which allow signatures. Adding content to your site and getting incoming links are of course still very useful when your ‘real’ site is launched and is in the sandbox because when the dreaded filter finally lifts these type of things will allow you to have the best possible chance of ranking well for your keywords and keyphrases. Anyhow that’s it for another day, I’d appreciate your comments and if you disagree with me, don’t just tell yourself, tell me.
