Is it impossible to get out of the Google sandbox? Has anyone actually managed to recover from this?

I launched a good-quality website 35 days ago. But even after all this time, it still doesn’t show up on Google — not even when I search for my brand name, which has zero competition.
Even typing the full URL doesn't bring it up. It only appears if I search with quotes like "domainname.com".
On other search engines (like Bing and Yandex), the site is already ranking at the top.
In the past, my websites would usually start ranking for their own names within a week.
Has anyone been through this and successfully resolved it? What’s the fastest way to fix this?

RickGrimesX said:

I launched a good-quality website 35 days ago. But even after all this time, it still doesn’t show up on Google — not even when I search for my brand name, which has zero competition.
Even typing the full URL doesn't bring it up. It only appears if I search with quotes like "domainname.com".
On other search engines (like Bing and Yandex), the site is already ranking at the top.
In the past, my websites would usually start ranking for their own names within a week.
Has anyone been through this and successfully resolved it? What’s the fastest way to fix this?

Click to expand...

If Google bot is not blocked every site would eventually start appearing for their brand name, unless the brand name is unique.

While 35 days isn't very long, I'll recommend you build some links. Start with very simple diversity links if you don't have those already. Also, you type of site would determine whether you need to create more content to give Google more pages to crawl.

you can always get out of the sandbox. But whether or not you will rank is a different story.

I got out of the sandbox with every site that I had, and I didn't do anything to get out of it. Sandbox is just a period of time during which - for various reasons (niche too competitive and / or your domain is fresh) - google doesn't let you rank even though you are indexed. But once that period of time passes (which can be anywhere from 3 months to 24 months from my experience) the sandbox ends and you are eligible for ranking.

It's not that complicated, I don't know why you guys are so confused by this

Anyway, to address some of your questions...

RickGrimesX said:

I launched a good-quality website 35 days ago. But even after all this time, it still doesn’t show up on Google — not even when I search for my brand name, which has zero competition.
Even typing the full URL doesn't bring it up. It only appears if I search with quotes like "domainname.com".

Click to expand...

this doesn't mean that you are sandboxed.

Actually, are you ranked / getting clicks or impressions for any other keyword for this website? If you do, you're NOT sandboxed. If you don't, it's 50-50 (either you're sandboxed, or the niche is really tough and you've not yet met google's requirements to break into top 100 even...

As for branded keywords, these are tricky because google will not rank you even for your own brand if the brand doesn't get enough mentions.

There was someone on the forum who managed to rank a brand new site (also brand new domain) for a completely new brand some time ago, but I forgot who he was... or what the link is. But if I find the link I'll post it here, but that was the only case that I've heard of when someone managed to rank a fresh site for a fresh brand quickly (and with black hat stuff if I remember correctly).

But otherwise you need people to search for your brand 1000s of times, over time (weeks usually) before google starts ranking you for your branded keyword, even if that keyword has no competition.

So, either find a way to have multiple people (from different IPs, geolocations, devices, etc.) search for your brand in google or via other mediums (social media or forums for example), and have them land on your site and after a few weeks of daily searches and / or mentions of your brand google should notice the activity and rank you at least on page 1 (if not top 3) for your branded keyword.

Either that, or wait for google to discover your brand on their own, although this could take months if your site / brand is not popular and doesn't get much activity

RickGrimesX said:

On other search engines (like Bing and Yandex), the site is already ranking at the top.

Click to expand...

well yeah, but other search engines are not as competitive and restrictive as google

RickGrimesX said:

In the past, my websites would usually start ranking for their own names within a week.

Click to expand...

so it's a recent update then.... Also, I'm thinking that your website - being so fresh - is lacking trust, and trust is a big deal with google nowadays. This would justify why in the past you managed to rank fast while nowadays you don't (trust had gained weight in the last year or so from what I've noticed, so it's very possible that unless you create authority and trust for your website it will not rank for its branded keywords as fast / easily as it used to)

Google takes a long time to update things, my friend..

sandbox sucks submit sitemap in Search Console drop 10+ killer articles push social signals on X and grab clean backlinks Youll break out soon

There’s no sandbox, just request indexing in Search Console, fix any crawl errors, grab a couple of real backlinks, and list your site in directories or Google Business. You should see your site show up under its own name in a few days.

Does not seems like a sandbox case here. To understand the problem better, here's a few quick questions.

1. Have you started with a fresh domain or it is a dropped domain?
2. During the 35 days of your website being live, how many and what kind of links you have built
3. Is it a content site like a blog or a static website.

The first question that comes to mind is: what status do the pages have in GSC? And second: what kind of content is on the site? If it's AI-generated, it might not make it out of the sandbox.

Totally normal for new sites to take a while - Google's more cautious now. Submit your sitemap, fix crawl errors in Search Console, get some niche-relvant backlinks, and build brand signals (like listings or mentions). Usually helps indexing within days.

yesss just dont make aggressive moves, wait for it.

tazarbm said:

Actually, are you ranked / getting clicks or impressions for any other keyword for this website? If you do, you're NOT sandboxed. If you don't, it's 50-50 (either you're sandboxed, or the niche is really tough and you've not yet met google's requirements to break into top 100 even...

Click to expand...

Actually, I'm barely getting any traffic from other keywords either. Maybe just 1 click a day, and that's quite rare. When I first launched the site, there was some initial growth, but since then, both impressions and clicks have been steadily declining. Most of the recent impressions are probably from me, since I search for "websitename.com" on Google to check how it appears.Also, I've recently shared my site link on some forums to get it noticed, so those might be appearing when the site name is searched.I read your full message, thank you. I'll try getting a few backlinks

RankMancer said:

sandbox sucks submit sitemap in Search Console drop 10+ killer articles push social signals on X and grab clean backlinks Youll break out soon

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Actually, I already have enough content, but yes, I should definitely work on social media shares too. Thank you, I’ll try.

RoyRoyan said:

The first question that comes to mind is: what status do the pages have in GSC? And second: what kind of content is on the site? If it's AI-generated, it might not make it out of the sandbox.

Click to expand...

My site provides localized information about specific institutions. I gather data from various official sources and present it in a graphical format. Each page includes not only the statistics but also an FAQ section and a short article of around 200–300 words. Since writing everything manually would slow me down significantly, I use AI to generate drafts and then make edits and adjustments myself.
Aside from the ones I intentionally marked as nofollow, about 90% of my pages appear to be indexed in Google Search Console. Thank you for your response.

seo crazy said:

There’s no sandbox, just request indexing in Search Console, fix any crawl errors, grab a couple of real backlinks, and list your site in directories or Google Business. You should see your site show up under its own name in a few days.

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I was thinking about setting up Google Business, but I postponed it because I don’t have an official address and I was unsure about which category to choose. Still, thank you for the suggestion.

UttoranSen said:

Does not seems like a sandbox case here. To understand the problem better, here's a few quick questions.

1. Have you started with a fresh domain or it is a dropped domain?
2. During the 35 days of your website being live, how many and what kind of links you have built
3. Is it a content site like a blog or a static website.

Click to expand...

1. When I acquired the domain, it had been dropped for about 3-4 years. It was previously used by someone else around 2020, but when I checked Web Archive, I couldn’t find any content from that period—only the GoDaddy sales page appeared. I also checked for bans, and the domain wasn’t banned. The domain was held by me for about a year before I launched the site.
2. I haven’t built many backlinks. I created profiles on major social media platforms like X, YouTube, and Facebook. Additionally, I made about 10 profile backlinks on various sites. Besides that, I have some forum links that generate some traffic.
3. My website provides information about specific institutions. I compile and connect data from different official sources and present them graphically. Each page also includes an FAQ section and a short article of about 200–300 words.

Thank you for your answers.

JessiPinkme said:

Totally normal for new sites to take a while - Google's more cautious now. Submit your sitemap, fix crawl errors in Search Console, get some niche-relvant backlinks, and build brand signals (like listings or mentions). Usually helps indexing within days.

Click to expand...

I hope my issue gets resolved soon, thank you.

k4shm1r said:

yesss just dont make aggressive moves, wait for it.

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Yes, I’m trying not to make any aggressive moves. I’m constantly making adjustments. Thank you.

UttoranSen said:

Does not seems like a sandbox case here. To understand the problem better, here's a few quick questions.

1. Have you started with a fresh domain or it is a dropped domain?
2. During the 35 days of your website being live, how many and what kind of links you have built
3. Is it a content site like a blog or a static website.

Click to expand...

These are the right questions. A lot will depend on the answers.

I would also recommend checking the internal linking of your website - it might be missing entirely or set up incorrectly.

Another possible reason for what’s happening is that your domain name contains a search keyword.
For example: RealEstateMax.com

If that's the case, your website won’t rank first for the exact domain name - at least not until it gains enough trust.

RickGrimesX said:

Actually, I'm barely getting any traffic from other keywords either. Maybe just 1 click a day, and that's quite rare. When I first launched the site, there was some initial growth, but since then, both impressions and clicks have been steadily declining. Most of the recent impressions are probably from me, since I search for "websitename.com" on Google to check how it appears.Also, I've recently shared my site link on some forums to get it noticed, so those might be appearing when the site name is searched.I read your full message, thank you. I'll try getting a few backlinks

Click to expand...

so it's not sandbox then.... Either it's the recent google update, or you need to SEO the crap out of your site, whatever this entails (internal links, content improvement, backlinks, social media presence, other trust factors, etc)

Have you checked your internal linking structure and crawl stats lately? Sometimes even small crawl errors or thin interlinking can slow down branded queries showing up properly. Also curious if anyone here has seen improvement after running branded search ads just to kickstart signals?