Sandboxed - Now What?

[hustle4dough]

I have a site that's about a month old. After adding a few social bookmark links and pinging it right after I made it and each time I updated it, it ended up at the top of page 2 for the keyword I'm targeting. It's an exact match domain. A few days ago I created 4 web 2.0 links. It was sort of a link chain, and it looks like this: Weebly--->Squidoo--->Wordpress--->Blogger. In addition to those links, each web 2.0 page had a link to my site. I bookmarked three of the web 2.0 pages on Digg, pinged them all, and added them to Google with the add url feature. At first my site jumped from the top of page two to the bottom of page one, but now it's at the middle of page twelve. I guess that Google doesn't like my little link chain. Maybe it's too obvious what I was doing. Anyway, what should I do next? Delete the blogs with the links, add more links, or just give up and move on to a new project?

 

[klawre1221]

add links. Maintain link velocity.

 

[Nakota757]

It doesn't sound like you've been sandboxed at all.

Sandboxed means you've been dropped from Google altogether.

This sounds like the Google Dance. Keep building links, and watch that shit go to the top!

 

[SahL]

I really dont think your site is SANDBOXED.

From the backlinking you have done, its cannot get sandboxed.

Ranking takes some time , have patience.

 

[beakon]

Ya you are certainly not sandboxed, otherwise you wouldn't be on page 12 you would be on page 60+.

As others have said, keep link building but add some diversity.

 

[steviep]

You are experiencing something called "end of the freshness bonus", at first when google discovers a site,it often presents it further up the serps as it actually should (probably to see how it fares, bounce and ctr wise), after that bonus has been expired it ranks where it should be with the "normal" algo factors, so keep on working on links..

 

[TheMatrix]

Keep building links at the same or a higher rate as the previous one. Do not panic. Keep adding more content to the site as well.

 

[nadroj]

Keep building. You are moving around because google is trying to figure out where you belong.

 

[asharma]

I think you might have been sandboxed. 6 of my sites got Sandboxed together yesterday. They were site with large no. of pages. Now, I can't figure how can they be sandboxed all together. Is it because they are on the same server or did google sandbox a lot of other sites yesterday as well?

 

[hustle4dough]

Thanks everyone! Now I'm at position two on page one sometimes and position four on page twelve sometimes. When I search normally I'm on page one, but when I use a free proxy to search I'm on page twelve. My keyword has low competition and only about 110 searches per month, which is why I was expecting good results with an exact match domain and just a few links. I'll keep adding links until I get it up to number one, and hopefully it will stay there and not bounce around!

 

[chucka95]

Thanks everyone! Now I'm at position two on page one sometimes and position four on page twelve sometimes. When I search normally I'm on page one, but when I use a free proxy to search I'm on page twelve. My keyword has low competition and only about 110 searches per month, which is why I was expecting good results with an exact match domain and just a few links. I'll keep adding links until I get it up to number one, and hopefully it will stay there and not bounce around!

Google tracks your normal searches (even when you're not signed in) and all sorts of things affect the results--if you've clicked on it, if your Google Plus friends have done a plus one, how many times you're searching for that particular term, etc

I use Pagewash for anonymous browsing when I want to do a quick search. The results are unaffected by all the other factors.

 

[Mihaita]

Now you wait and add some really QUALITY links.

 

[SuperLinks]

The fact is you'll need to keep building backlinks and content on your site. Its simply too new to see any sort of ranking stabilization at this point. Like another member pointed out its too soon to be sandboxed with the type of linkbuilding you are doing. There's simply just not enough links at this point to throw it in the sandbox.

Remember SEO is typically a long term play so don't expect immediate results.

 

[hustle4dough]

Google tracks your normal searches (even when you're not signed in) and all sorts of things affect the results--if you've clicked on it, if your Google Plus friends have done a plus one, how many times you're searching for that particular term, etc

I use Pagewash for anonymous browsing when I want to do a quick search. The results are unaffected by all the other factors.

Thanks for the Pagewash tip. Using that I'm at position 7 on page 6, and I know I'd still be on the top of page 2 if I hadn't created the link chain. I'll keep adding links, but I'm sure Google is punishing me for such an obvious attempt to manipulate my rankings.

 

[hustle4dough]

I think I figured out what went wrong here. It may be that Google sees my link chain as a "link scheme" and penalized me because of it, or the link chain might be totally legit. I don't know. However, I was reading about Google penalties and I learned that using the same anchor text in all your links can get you penalized for some reason. I'm quoting this website: www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/google_penalty.html

"In-bound link over-optimisation is the single most common cause of a Google penalty. Poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text often causes problems, especially where there has been a high link accrual rate and the website is relatively new."

"There is strong evidence that Google has recently introduced some new automatic over optimisation filters into their algorithm. These seem to have the effect of applying a penalty to a page which has been over optimised for the same keyword by link building."

My website is relatively new, and all my web 2.0 page links to it used the same anchor text. Mystery solved! However, since I've heard that Google doesn't like link wheels and link systems that resemble them, I won't be building any link chains for any of my other sites. I'm going to add a few more pages to the one I've already started building and add a second tier just to see what happens and to see if my site ever ends up bouncing back (and after how long) but I'll be using other strategies to build links to my other sites.

 

[phpbuilt]

Sandboxed means you've been dropped from Google altogether.

Deindexing means you've been dropped from Google altogether. Sandboxing means your website is in the index, but not ranking as well as it should, pushed down a page or many pages.

However, since I've heard that Google doesn't like link wheels and link systems that resemble them, I won't be building any link chains for any of my other sites.

You've heard that Google doesn't like linkwheels or anything that resembles them? Really? You didn't hear it on BHW.

7 people in this thread so far gave you the correct answer (keep building links). Not one of them has said to avoid linkwheels.

 

[hustle4dough]

7 people in this thread so far gave you the correct answer (keep building links). Not one of them has said to avoid linkwheels.

Ok, ok. I don't have experience with link wheels so who am I to argue. I guess it was just the fact that I used the same anchor text in all my links that got my site banished to page 6.