The "Google Sandbox" Probably Does not Exist

Earlier today I read an article on the "Google sandbox", a supposed negative PR for every page on every website that is under "x" amount of days or months old (https://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/189/google-sandbox/).

This article claimed that the Google sandbox was a sort of anti-spam page ranking system that may or may not exist. Knowing absolutely nothing about SEO, the first thing that comes to mind for me are "churn and burn" sites that use black hat methods to get first page PR for a short amount of time before they get discovered and unranked. If a theoretical Google sandbox exists, it's definitely targeting these types.

Here's my dilemma: last I checked, churn and burn sites still worked. In what I've read, some take longer to rank (e.g. 1 month versus 1 week) but they still work, right? Wouldn't the ability to still use black hat SEO to rank churn and burn sites strongly disconfirm the existence of a Google sandbox from a probabilistic standpoint? If a negative PR were attributed to every site under a certain temporal threshold, I can't see a plausible explanation for the existence of working churn and burn SEO methodoloogy.

Do any experienced SEO'ers have anything to contribute? This is an open-ended question. Is there any line of reasoning that you think strongly confirms or disconfirms the Google sandbox hypothesis?

It looks like you pulled up a really old article. That looks to be written pre-2013 at the latest. Be careful with the info you read into and how old it is. For a lot of SEO stuff I won't even bother with almost anything that's pre-2014.

Are you saying that my churn and burn info is pre-2014, or that the sandbox theory is pre-2014? I know my article is likely pre-2014, but it's still a legitimate question today, in 2016, to ask whether the sandbox exists, right?

Churn & Burn. The burn is google sandbox or even worst, manual actions.

TayaX said:

Churn & Burn. The burn is google sandbox or even worst, manual actions.

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I don't think you understood quite what I was saying. Churn and burn websites are sites that use black hat SEOA to get high PR but are quickly disabled by Google after they're discovered.

Are we talking about the same thing? Maybe I missed some subtle word play somewhere.

Noah Hawryshko said:

I don't think you understood quite what I was saying. Churn and burn websites are sites that use black hat SEOA to get high PR but are quickly disabled by Google after they're discovered.

Are we talking about the same thing? Maybe I missed some subtle word play somewhere.

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We're talking about the same thing. A churn and burn website only works for a few days/weeks until it's penalized or sandboxed.

TayaX said:

We're talking about the same thing. A churn and burn website only works for a few days/weeks until it's penalized or sandboxed.

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I see what you're saying now. However, the article is talking about a default sandbox based on the youth of the domain in question, rather than it's penalization status. I get that Google penalizes churn and burns, but does it penalize new sites merely for being new?

Noah Hawryshko said:

I see what you're saying now. However, the article is talking about a default sandbox based on the youth of the domain in question, rather than it's penalization status. I get that Google penalizes churn and burns, but does it penalize new sites merely for being new?

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No definitely not. I have had brand new domains bust into the SERPs no problem.

The sandbox is simply a myth, because many people can not explain the reason why they cannot rank with new sites sometimes and they think there is some "magical" sandbox that keeps the new sites locked until they age. 99% of times the problem lies in over-optimization penalties (that are very easy to trigger) that you get by fucking up your on-site SEO. Also, churn & burn proves perfectly that the sandbox is not real. Viral sites also prove this point. In fact, one of the "core" principles of churn & burn is to simulate virality, hence why it works so well.

There is no sandbox or rockbox, some shit that SEO agencies have theorised to get the clients to spend for a longer subscription period.

Some of the people who tried to make a big deal out of the Google Sandbox have a lot to gain.

A lot of them are in the business of selling "Aged Domains".

If it is true that completely fresh new domains don't rank, then, they stand to make quite a bit of money.

You might want to consider the vested interest involved in perpetrating and promoting certain ideas regarding SEO.

Personally speaking, I believe there is such a thing as a Google Sandbox.

It's a holding period for websites that focus on certain niches.

But then again, as one poster above replied, you might want to look for information after 2014.

My experience from 2008 would tell you that yes, there was a Sandbox at least at that time.

I'm not sure about now.

There probably was and still is a sandbox. I'd think it's more of a tarpit than a cage and that it was developed for sites that go viral where they don't have much authority to begin with, and google puts a damper on things because the content might not be the quality google wants seen in SERPs just based statistically on the fact that it's a noname site with a lot to say all of a sudden.

Even if an aged site suddenly changes it's theme I would imagine google puts restrictions on it until algorithms indicate that the content is trustworthy enough to rise in the SERPs.

blackbeans said:

Some of the people who tried to make a big deal out of the Google Sandbox have a lot to gain.

A lot of them are in the business of selling "Aged Domains".

If it is true that completely fresh new domains don't rank, then, they stand to make quite a bit of money.

You might want to consider the vested interest involved in perpetrating and promoting certain ideas regarding SEO.

Personally speaking, I believe there is such a thing as a Google Sandbox.

It's a holding period for websites that focus on certain niches.

But then again, as one poster above replied, you might want to look for information after 2014.

My experience from 2008 would tell you that yes, there was a Sandbox at least at that time.

I'm not sure about now.

Click to expand...

@blackbeans you literally spilled the beans

I own quite a few 'test sites' that I use to post on to check if a kw can get in the top 100 with only onpage optimization before I target them on my main site.

I tend to keep all the kws in my ranktracker for a while, and have notice that after a few weeks, the kws that didnt even reach the top 300, start ranking.

These domains have zero backlinks and all domains are quite new.

This makes me think that the sandbox may very well exist as I have seen this happen time and time again

Churn and burn worked absolutely amazing in 2013, sort of in 2014, and 2015 / 2016 has become much harder.

I haven't been able to pump a competitive site to top 3 in a month (doesn't mean it's not possible of course), it usually takes a few months to rank nowadays, unfortunately.