When does the google sandbox officially start?

I couldn’t find anything on this so was curious from others experience, when the google sandbox really starts. Does it start when you register the domain? Or does it start when Wordpress is installed? Or does it only start once you have content up?

I am asking because I registered a domain for a niche I was thinking I wanted to go into a few months back. I purchased the domain and installed Wordpress but had it just sitting there for about 3 to 4 months now. I just published my first 10 articles and was curious if NOW is when the sandbox affect would start taking place. My last site took about 6 to 7 months to even start to get traffic. Would it be expected to see results sooner, since the domains older? Or would the so called “timer” start from the time I published my first post?

It starts as soon as you're indexed, they give your site a shot and monitor user behavior. If it's standard SEO behavior, they sandbox you. Otherwise if you spend $ 2 million in promotion (like a new movie site), they'll let you out of the sandbox.

IT sort of always depends sometimes on a site gets lucky and does not experience the full sandbox effect or sometimes the person gets unlucky it lasts a full 2 years but you can try and speed up getting out of the sandbox by doing these sorts of things

High quality content
Press Releases
Social media processes
High quality link building
Redirection of good or aged domain
Among other things.

Well,I just added my site to search console today so I’m assuming it would start soon. Zero clue if it’s been indexed before or not, but I assume not since it didn't have any content until yesterday lol.

Thanks.

It's difficult to believe what the story is with the sandbox, I've had sites sit in it I think, and others that within days of publishing start to get traffic and rank well.
Best just to understand it as temp evaluation, and go along with that, to begin with as you develop your site, and just don't put all your time into it for the first few months, work your projects in parallel.
Then you can monitor which ones start to take off, and "come out" the sandbox.
If you just published content to it, then just assume it starts today, as effectively you have now branded your website with a content purpose now.

Panther28 said:

It's difficult to believe what the story is with the sandbox, I've had sites sit in it I think, and others that within days of publishing start to get traffic and rank well.
Best just to understand it as temp evaluation, and go along with that, to begin with as you develop your site, and just don't put all your time into it for the first few months, work your projects in parallel.
Then you can monitor which ones start to take off, and "come out" the sandbox.
If you just published content to it, then just assume it starts today, as effectively you have now branded your website with a content purpose now.

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Ok that actually sounds good, thank you. With my very first large site ever it took almost 6 months to see any progress but still has major indexing issues. I spent alot of time on that site and it took days to even get it setup.

I spent an hour on this domain and got everything setup and am working on my first 30 posts to get up in the next 10 days. I’ve sort of learned my lesson when it comes to expecting results “fast” so this is a more build and forget project. just was curious if I even should expect results SLIGHTLY faster but either way I’m ok with it taking Just as long if it does.

Thanks for the response.

There's no sandbox if you target low comp keywords. If you check my journey, I'm getting almost 4000 pageviews in a a couple of months and most of the articles are on page 1 and 2. Theres another site I started in Feb and that's over 50,000 pageviews a month on a fresh domain with no links.

If you go for easy keywords that have searches, you'll start seeing traffic in a couple of months. You don't have to wait around for the sandbox.

warriorsam53 said:

There's no sandbox if you target low comp keywords. If you check my journey, I'm getting almost 4000 pageviews in a a couple of months and most of the articles are on page 1 and 2. Theres another site I started in Feb and that's over 50,000 pageviews a month on a fresh domain with no links.

If you go for easy keywords that have searches, you'll start seeing traffic in a couple of months. You don't have to wait around for the sandbox.

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Thank you for your input. What do you classify as easy? No one targeting the term?

popbradley said:

Thank you for your input. What do you classify as easy? No one targeting the term?

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Yes. That would be ideal. If nobody is talking about it, Google has nothing to show.

popbradley said:

Well,I just added my site to search console today so I’m assuming it would start soon. Zero clue if it’s been indexed before or not, but I assume not since it didn't have any content until yesterday lol.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Your site was probably indexed within the first week of installing WP. I don't know how they discover new sites so fast without any links, but once you've installed WP, expect to see your homepage in Google within a week.

I think that there are so many misconceptions about the so called "google sandbox". There is a important balance between the sandbox time and the competition for a keyword that many times isn't accounted for.

Google will always try to get the best results for each search. When there are many websites with good DA that could be a good fit for a search, why Google should rush up things and show your new content from your new website to them? You may think that YOUR content is best for the searching user, but Google doesn't KNOW it yet. Thus, he start to show your website for a small audience to check how they respond to it. If they like it (low bounce rate, good time on page etc), the algorithm will show you to more people.

BUT, what if there aren't many good results for a search? In this case, Google can kinda "bootstrap" your website if the algorithm thinks that your content is a good match for the search. In this case, it's worth for Google to take a shot at your page, since there's a chance of your brand new content be better than those okay results that are on first page.

Google search is all about user experience, and algorithms are all about math and statistics. We all should stop thinking that Google sandboxes websites just for the sake of it.

This effect exists, if content immediately ranked of new domain
So, the engine has a longer time to figure out if the content is actually beneficial to users, and then rank it if that is the case.
Google Sandbox effect lasts somewhere between 1 and 6 months.

Based on my experience, the Sandbox officially starts when you start publishing "enough content."

There are no hard-set figures for this; it depends on your niche and how much competition you have.

But as a rule of thumb, 25 to 30 posts would be a good place to start thinking about the Google Sandbox "countdown period."

At the end of the day, it all boils down to your target topics and how easy it is to rank for those keywords.

You will probably get out of the Sandbox sooner if you build a website on keywords that barely get searches and you publish tons of articles that fully deliver on those keywords.

As a general rule after 6 month it goes away. Quality content with good interlinking can help you get out th sandbox faster. Mix it with some smart link building and it's kryptonite.