The Google Sandbox – Does It Exist?

Today I want to share my opinion about the Google Sandbox.

First of all, I am very reluctant to use this term in connection with a search engine. Before I started working as SEO, I only knew the term connected with test platforms for web developers. For example, eBay uses a sandbox to offer API developers the opportunity to create test accounts and test auctions without appearing.

SEO is often understood to mean a devaluation of pages with the sandbox. If pages with specific keywords appear further in the results than before, this is often referred to as a sandbox, especially for new pages.

Incidentally, Google Itself Has Always Denied The Existence of a Sandbox.

But what would be the use of a sandbox for Google? Here one could assume that a new page first has to prove spam-free before it appears far up in the SERPS. This would also make sense as the real spammers wouldn’t get the traffic from Google right away. Here, however, the problem of recognizing a spam page reappears. By the way, by spam pages, I mainly mean pages that try to get links quickly using SEO spam methods, for example, using particular bots.

If You Dig a Little Deeper, However, You Can Guess The Sandbox.

For example, if you follow the Twitter statements of the well-known Google’s a little closer:

My answer is not to worry that much. The difference between a domain that’s six months old verses one year senior is not that big at all. So as long as you’ve been around for a least a couple of months, a few months, you should be able to make sure that you’re able to show up in the search results. – John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google

Be Careful With Building Links on New Websites.

So imagine such an aside. As an example, let’s take a serious page on the subject of “private health insurance.” (Incidentally, a popular topic for AdSense sites, as the click prices are very high). Now the operator of this site uses a bot that surfs across the Internet and leaves a link to the site on every web form. The bot even uses different link texts and sets 100 links in one day.

Let’s say this page ends up in the Google sandbox. However, this gives her the same chance of getting out of the sandbox as any other. How does Google know that it is a spam site?

On the one hand, one could mention the quick link building here. In my opinion, however, you cannot identify a spam page from a fast link building. The Google Bot does not visit every page on the same day, so the bot does not know when the link was set. Assuming that each page is visited on average once a week (this means sub-pages), the 100 links from the example were set for Google within 14 days. And in my opinion, this is not very unusual and not an indication of a spam site. A well-done Nike microsite would likely get many more natural links in the same amount of time.

The fast link building does not have to be an indication of a spam site. But how is Google supposed to recognize this page as spam? Probably not at all. I haven’t made excessive use of such practices yet, but I would be very interested to see whether such sites make it up in the SERPS.

But Now, Back To The Google Sandbox.

My own experience shows that new pages often appear at the front after indexing and fall far back after a few days/weeks. After a specific time (usually several months), these pages all come back and appear again at the front.

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