the sandboxed myth

[Tensegrity]

Well, from today I can disagree with you guys. I had a site ranking #3 on the first page for about 2 months now and blasted with around 10k (only 3k indexed) spammy comments and it has now dropped to the page 59. The site is a bit over 3 months old.
I used 4 different anchor texts and I also deeplinked.
I think that maybe your site can not be penalized for spammy links once the site is old or has earned trust rank.
That's just what happened to me. I know, it sucks.

Yea, I've already explained this. You're experiencing a google dance due to 3 thousand new pages being associated with your keyword. If your site already had trust (high quality links pointed at your site) then you would probably only benefit, but instead there is no trust so you're getting shuffled with the rest of the 3k low quality pages that just got indexed.

You're just freaking because it just happened, but give it a couple weeks and I'm sure you'll be back. Feel free to report back here in a couple weeks (I would even give it a month) and let us know how you're doing. But I've done the exact same case study a kajillion times and seen this happen a lot. But it's never permanent, that is my point.

 

[Descartes]

Oh, I know it's never permanent, the thing is for how long are you going to stay on the 30th page.

 

[hitext]

No, you're wrong. The Sandbox and Google penalties definitely exist...I have a friend who has proof. He also has some amazing pictures of the Loch Ness monster that he took on vacation on Scotland, and he has just emailed me a photo of Bigfoot that he took yesterday.

Anyway, I've got to go...it's not safe here. I've just spotted a flying saucer above my house...

 

[mytocents]

they refer to it as a goo slapp and it they do have penalties.. now for backlinks i think as long as they dont all show up over nite then you will be ok, If they crawl your site and find 10,000 links over nite yeah then there will be a red flag there.

 

[black101]

basically what you are saying is, if your site is 100% original and nothing illegal. You will not get penalized for building to much backlinks

 

[Ramsweb]

I think the sandbox exists. Obviously, Google will not give away information about the Sandbox or the penalties they impose as people are just going to find ways to avoid it by manipulating their sites.

My site got slammed for an obvious link wheel that I created. I tried to index the link wheel and my site was gone in 24 hours. It has been 7 months now. My site has good very good on page SEO and Google really liked my site before as I was constantly on the first and second page without much backlinking. I just got a little greedy to push it to the top and have been penalized for 7 months now. It looks like the site is slowly coming back but you definitely have to be careful about obviously spammy backlinks.

 

[suyvv]

Hi Tensegrity, I got 2 websites sandboxed a week ago for pinging the backlinks:

Site A is a little more than 1 year old, it was ranking on top of many niche keywords and receiving around 2k unique per day. I made the mistake of putting 6k pingback backlinks to
the linklicious service, put 30 links in each rss feed and submitted one rss each hour for around 30 hours, then I found the site was in sandbox the next day. I stopped ping any backlinks after that and it has been a week in sandbox now.

Site B is 1 year and a half old, it was ranking on top of many niche keywords for a few months as well, it has gone through a sandbox period for around 2 months in the past. Recently as google updated the biggest search volume keyword was drop to no.3 or no.4,
I have been blasting a few web2.0 with a xrumer service build 1k profile links every day for close to a month, these web2.0 link directly with the big keyword to my site. The same day as site A got sandbox, I made another mistake
by putting 10k profile links to linklicious to create rss feeds for them, ping all the rss feeds and the links all at once, the next day I did the same to another 10k links, then I didn't ping anyore. Now the site is in sandbox as well.




Since this is the first time I sandbox websites using pinging, I don't know what kind of result to expect. Could you plz answer the following questions:

1. Why would site B got sandbox as I only ping backlinks for the links that link to web2.0s?
2. Is this sandbox of my sites a normal google dance, or it's a penalty?
3. Will these sites come back from sandbox? If so will these sites come out with higher positions, or much lower positions than before?
4. How long will it take for them to come out from sandbox in your estimation?
5. Are there anything I should do to get them out?

Currently I'm adding more AMR articles to continual build links to both sites.

Thanks in advance and I'll be really appreciate your input!!

 

[goads]

sandbox or what ever you want to call it is real but for different reasons then most people think. It not so much weighted on the quantity of links but on the quality and diversity of links. If I spam 1oK forum profile links to one domain .com and use a few hundred quality links for the .net domain (content being equal) the .com will rank fast and die fast. the .net will slowly rise and last longer on top. So easy come easy go. Patience is the key to long lasting success.
Link quantity, diversity, quality, and velocity.
Remember you can rank right away using fast spamming methods because Google sees this as chatter or interest building online, but if the velocity and quality are not in the link juice it will die off and google defaults to the constant sites with quality established links. This is also why social networking is starting to play a role in rankings. networks like twitter, facebook, linkedin will become new playgrounds for us blackhatters to use to rank. the social chatter tells google what is popular and what people are wanting to find online. So mix that up with quality and of course good content and you will be able to make your site an established authority.
This is why news items show up on 1st page, but drop within hours or a day.
So back to the sandbox which is basically a ranking your websites ends up at after all the chatter has stopped and your left with nothing of quality or substance.

 

[Tensegrity]

Yea, I dunno why you people are having problems. I've done test after test and never seen any of mine or my clients sites sandboxed after pounding them with links. I've only seen google dances or people losing ranking for not having the keyword in their title. Also, i've seen people lose ranking for keyword stuffing. I mean, simple SEO 101 kinda stuff, never from too many links.

I'm gonna drop the subject now, though. Cuz there's obviously a ton of problems that could be arising and obviously everyone is blaming the links but overlooking the fact that if they don't have the site set up properly before throwing the links at it (or not throwing any quality links as well) then you're simply not doing it right, it's not the quantity of the links.

 

[suyvv]

Op only talks about mass link building, do you have any ideas about sandboxing a site for mass pinging the backinks or engerizing/indexing too many backlinks all at once???

 

[Xanthos]

I do believe it exists however it only affects new sites. In particular a new site with not a lot of content development and rapid backlinking. My buddy builds sites daily with his mini-site formula and he's lost a good solid 5% to the sandbox or "something" as he doesn't just lose rank but all traffic and his sales numbers plummet to 0 on those sites.

Sadly I think it actually has more to do with what other sites on the hosting server have been breaking the rules. I mean hosting even offer a paid upgrade in many cases so you won't get hit by such a thing. I've had site dissappear and I know others who have. I'm not talking just missing ranking but entire sites that go to 0 traffic for months and can't be searched out.

At the same time I'm not sure that aggressive backlinking is always the culprit I do tend to think its something else in many cases as well.

 

[1337WuLF]

I have recently experienced a 1 and a half month G dance. But my site came out of it higher than it was before. You could call it sandbox, but Id rather call it a Google Dance.

 

[JannuBl22t]

this is the kinda of thing that people has been always talking about...some experts says it does exist and some don't...

who came first: chicken or egg? what is the purpose of life? how airplanes fly? there are mysteries that there is no way to discover the truth.

Dude.. honestly.. WTF

If you wanna know how airplanes fly then here's a link.. http://www.kids.ct.gov/kids/cwp/view.asp?a=2731&q=330926

 

[guydoesit]

I launched a new website, which was great for SEO and i started obtaining links gradually then i made a mistake of allowing a freelancer to do some link building and i went straight up from 100 to 500 profile links and within 1 week i was sandboxed. Maybe it was the fact that the links were all profile link or the fact that there were too many obtained too fast, I?m not sure.

 

[britcpa]

Well I blasted 10k links to my doctor who site (watchdoctorwho.co.uk) and it's been sandboxed, if it's not and it's top of bing and yahoo what do u think the reason is? not trying to be smart actually wanna know lol. I was ranking 7th for watch doctor who in the uk and now i'm not in serps at all

--------------------------


jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus christ!!!!!

just seen how many times youve given THANKS since joining in 2009 - Thanks: 4,294,967,295

whats THAT about? lol

 

[Tensegrity]

From this google patent,
http://www.google.com/patents?id=E7ShAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Patents do not proof if it exists. It's simply a possibility google has thought of.
However there is also the fact that fast link building already has some algorithms with a throttle back incorporated.
For instance this one: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/01/detecting-new-googlebombs.html

Patent + throttle back algo already in place + loads of people across boards reporting the "sandbox" phenomena, i would say there's a high probability that the sandbox does exist.
Sadly nothing is fact when guessing.

Cheers

First of all, I am not guessing. You didn't read my original post, apparently. I'm going by what I've seen from various client sites and my own after running bulk backlinks day after day after day after day after day.

Second of all, the patent does not discuss sandboxing, it discusses lower scoring of a page when the links come in too fast, i.e. high velocity. Part of my service is that the links get indexed over time, although many times people DO experience a sandbox for a brief period of time, and I've already discussed it here, it's called a "dance". Their sites come back because new links get indexed and change things. Plus, some of my clients like to blast the pages I create for them to give them a push. That has made my network pretty strong.

But this thread isn't about my network, it's about the sandbox effect. And my whole point is that it's not the number of links that pushes your site down. It's other factors, and the patent you posted proves my point.

There is a sandbox. I've seen my competitor's website get sandbox, I've seen my sites get sandboxed. Complete deindex from google. It never happens with yahoo or bing though. But definitely google sandboxes sites. There were many sites from experiments and tests in blackhatworld that proves there is a sandbox.

Getting deindexed is not sandboxed, it's being banned.

Honestly, the people saying there is no sandbox are coming from people that are selling backlinks, scrapebox blasts, and xrumer blasts.
I don't want to offend anyone but I have to say the truth. You guys have no idea about seo. Sell your backlink blasts or whatever. Leave the climbing of serps and falling of serps to people who actually know what they are doing and talking about.

I fully admitted that I sell backlinks, that wasn't the point of my thread. I'm not trying to trick anybody into buying from me here, I'm trying to help people realize that they need to step up their SEO game instead of running around with these myths in their head. And by "step-up" I mean do the tests yourself. Don't take my word for it, please. Do the tests and you'll see that I'm right.

One more thing, just for my own pride here , I most certainly do know quite a bit about SEO, I wouldn't have hundreds of my sites ranking and pulling in cash if I didn't. My link-building service used to be a big part of my life, and now it's just a fraction of my income. How would that happen if didn't know what I'm talking about? About 75% of my income comes from SEO traffic. I'd say I must be doing something right...

For anyone else who is looking for some genuine help here, this is what I have to offer: if you buy a bulk backlinking service and get your site sandboxed, there's probably one of the following going on:
1. keyword stuffing on your site
2. too high link velocity
3. no high quality backlinks
4. duplicate content (a la Panda update)

Over n out..

 

[TNphoneman]

Getting deindexed is not sandboxed, it's being banned.

I see this a lot here. Being out of the top 1k does not mean your site is deindexed. I have had pages ranking in the top 4 pages only to disappear from the top 1k and then come back higher.

 

[SOCOM]

There is even tool to check google penalty here:
hxxp://tools.seomoves.org/penaltychecker/

That tool is full of shit. My website has no backlinking done to it, so how would I have a severe penalty?

 

[Spitman]

The greatest trick Matt Cutts ever pulled was convincing the world the Sandbox didn't exist...

For what its worth Google has something like 40 billion pages indexed...saying something doesn't exist due to not having seen it (yet) in your experience on your, and your clients sites is akin to me denying that HIV exists because I have never met anyone that has it.

 

[Moayediyan]

I have one domain that is removed from the top 1000 pages and has not entered for the past 3 weeks or so. What I usually do is set my xrumer drip feed to keep building links, like 300 links per day.

Tensegrity, what do you do or recommend when this happens to a site. I understand what your saying... that a lot has to do with the on-page SEO. But... once this does happen how do you go about getting the site back up in the SERPS? do you just leave it or keep building links to it on a daily basis?

Anyways, thnx for sharing your experience