Theory on Google sandbox

Just a thought - there is a lot of talk about there being a sandbox of sorts for new websites, but Google deny it (ref - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-sandbox-23913.html).
I tend to never quite beleive what Google say publically and I feel like whilst they might not lie as such, they manipulate their answer to disguise the truth.

Regarding sandbox it makes me think that there probably is something in place that makes it appear as if there is a sandbox, but there actually isn't a sandbox as such - hense why Google deny it.

So today I was thinking that perhaps its more of a reputation thing - a little bit like how, with a new IP address, your mails end up going into the spam folder purely because you don't have a reputation yet - and no reputation is the effectively a bad reputation.

Maybe the "sandbox" effect is similar to that in so much as Google just doesn't have enough data on your domain or website to allow it into the serps.

Thoughts?

that might be a factor. what about sending multiple emails to yourself from your own domain and whitelisting your address? could be effective

davids355 said:

Just a thought - there is a lot of talk about there being a sandbox of sorts for new websites, but Google deny it (ref - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-sandbox-23913.html).
I tend to never quite beleive what Google say publically and I feel like whilst they might not lie as such, they manipulate their answer to disguise the truth.

Regarding sandbox it makes me think that there probably is something in place that makes it appear as if there is a sandbox, but there actually isn't a sandbox as such - hense why Google deny it.

So today I was thinking that perhaps its more of a reputation thing - a little bit like how, with a new IP address, your mails end up going into the spam folder purely because you don't have a reputation yet - and no reputation is the effectively a bad reputation.

Maybe the "sandbox" effect is similar to that in so much as Google just doesn't have enough data on your domain or website to allow it into the serps.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Maybe is kinda like youtube, when you first start the channel, you dont get a lot of viewers. But as you add more and more content, better if its daily. You see your channel growing more and more. Maybe the sandbox might be like that, since the website is new and google dont trust it yet. Or might be like a spam filter, that filters bad sites before ranking them.

I have asked myself this question several times in the past and yours is among one of the theories I came up with.

A way to test this hypothesis would be to setup a site targetting medium difficulty keywords, and building a lot of editorial type links to the site. More than what the Authority sites have for those keywords at the moment.

The site needs to target medium difficulty keywords because low difficulty longtails often don't have any content directly targeting them so if a new site ranks for those, we would simply deduce that was because of a lack of content and not necessarily because it broke a sandbox.

Just for the sake of clarity, I define a "site that is in sandbox" to be a site that isn't getting ranked for the keywords its competitors are getting ranked for even tho it has equal/ somewhat equivalent stats of its competitors.

By this definition, it means a site can rank for some keywords and still be in a sandbox.

Since a lot of sites can easily rank for a lot of longtail keywords quickly, i believe we can say that a "hard sandbox" based on a site's age/authority/backlink profile doesn't exist.
If that were the case, that site wouldn't be in the first page at all.

I have seen really new sites that were launched 30 days prior landing in the first page for some very obscure longtails. If there was a hard sandbox, those sites wouldn't be there.

I think that's basically what the sandbox entails too.

IG Professor said:

that might be a factor. what about sending multiple emails to yourself from your own domain and whitelisting your address? could be effective

Click to expand...

Yes, sending emails to your army of emails helps to build a good reputation.

It can be done using bots to whitelist your email within the provider that you want to build a reputation with. Custom bot for each provider.

I’ve never had an issue with the sandbox while targeting low comp keywords. One of my sites had 30,000 pageviews in under 2 months. Not all my sites have similar results of course but I have several sites that had 1000+ pageviews a month in under 3 months. All fresh domains with no links.

I'm not sure what a sandbox means, but the term is so widespread that I would say nowadays, is a way to mean, de facto, the CTR trials that Google do with your site to check if it's worth to be right in the top.

So basically, if your site in the 3rd week of life, is 1 week in the top 5, and then it absolutely disappears to go back 3 weeks later, I would not say that it is sandboxed, but in fact it never was fixed on "top 5" but being trialled on "top 5".

Nowadays, I feel start from scratch in SEO is extremely exhausting. I've been teaching some guys lately and most of them get burnt pretty fast. Unless you stay for long enough and go into the "wheel", working on new sites that may rank 5 months later, and at the same time, tweaking sites that you built 5 months ago, to improve them further, otherwise obsessing with ranks scratches insanity.

The only way to stick hard, is with PBN, and the cost is prohibitive for all starters. So personally I think, it's easier to talk about a "sandbox" so people gets used to all this s**t, regardless the way it works (as a sandbox as we know, or as a trial as I suggest).

Keyword stuffing is the reason you are in the sandbox.

Everyone has their own theory in this thread lol.

davids355 said:

Just a thought - there is a lot of talk about there being a sandbox of sorts for new websites, but Google deny it (ref - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-sandbox-23913.html).
I tend to never quite beleive what Google say publically and I feel like whilst they might not lie as such, they manipulate their answer to disguise the truth.

Regarding sandbox it makes me think that there probably is something in place that makes it appear as if there is a sandbox, but there actually isn't a sandbox as such - hense why Google deny it.

So today I was thinking that perhaps its more of a reputation thing - a little bit like how, with a new IP address, your mails end up going into the spam folder purely because you don't have a reputation yet - and no reputation is the effectively a bad reputation.

Maybe the "sandbox" effect is similar to that in so much as Google just doesn't have enough data on your domain or website to allow it into the serps.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Asides ranking high, what is your evidence that a site is out of the sandbox (or whatever it is)?

Perfect analogy
I couldn't agree more
Also, the fact that aged domains get an early start fits this narrative

davids355 said:

Just a thought - there is a lot of talk about there being a sandbox of sorts for new websites, but Google deny it (ref - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-sandbox-23913.html).
I tend to never quite beleive what Google say publically and I feel like whilst they might not lie as such, they manipulate their answer to disguise the truth.

Regarding sandbox it makes me think that there probably is something in place that makes it appear as if there is a sandbox, but there actually isn't a sandbox as such - hense why Google deny it.

So today I was thinking that perhaps its more of a reputation thing - a little bit like how, with a new IP address, your mails end up going into the spam folder purely because you don't have a reputation yet - and no reputation is the effectively a bad reputation.

Maybe the "sandbox" effect is similar to that in so much as Google just doesn't have enough data on your domain or website to allow it into the serps.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

I have thought of it as: to them, it's not the "Google Sandbox" but rather something small of their own design that prevents new websites from breaking through the SERPs. It equates to the sandbox, but that's not how they think of it.

I imagine it's for their own peace of mind. If they admitted it and publicly said it, they'd need to come out with something like "Newer websites aren't released into the SERPs until 90 days have passed". That would have loads of people (us) buying domains to have them sit for whatever timeframe they allocate.

Yeah, I've came up with the same explanation for the "sandbox." It's not that there's some switch that flips and then you're allowed to rank, it's that it takes time for Google to collect enough data on your site.

davids355 said:

Just a thought - there is a lot of talk about there being a sandbox of sorts for new websites, but Google deny it (ref - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-sandbox-23913.html).
I tend to never quite beleive what Google say publically and I feel like whilst they might not lie as such, they manipulate their answer to disguise the truth.

Regarding sandbox it makes me think that there probably is something in place that makes it appear as if there is a sandbox, but there actually isn't a sandbox as such - hense why Google deny it.

So today I was thinking that perhaps its more of a reputation thing - a little bit like how, with a new IP address, your mails end up going into the spam folder purely because you don't have a reputation yet - and no reputation is the effectively a bad reputation.

Maybe the "sandbox" effect is similar to that in so much as Google just doesn't have enough data on your domain or website to allow it into the serps.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

exactly. the sandbox is basically a trust earning period.

i think if you don't spam backlinks and prove you are not a spammer you will eventually come out a winner.

Age / Sandbox probation period is a vetting process to see your off-page activities over a period of several months.

It is common everywhere like on YouTube also. In fact, in offline world also if you have to go to a doctor, you will go to an old and reputed doctor and not someone new.

That's a great theory!

And what I like about your idea is that it lines up with the other popular idea regarding the Sandbox.

It may well turn out that there's really no Sandbox Algorithm per se.

Instead, it's a combination of different factors that work together to create the effect of some sort of holding time or artificial ranking suppression period for new sites.

Of course, reputation as you mentioned is part of the mix.

This can be manifested in different ways like domain authority, content authority, and some other set of matrix.

At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter whether it is a specific program or algorithm.

What matters is the effect that everybody could measure and everybody could be aware of.

There is definitely a suppression effect.

New sites have almost no chance for ranking keywords. Sites with authority and age which have proved themselves will always be preferred.