The Google Sandbox AKA ‘Ageing Filter’

Every day is a schoolday when it comes to the weird world of search engine optimisation.. it seems that in my aggressive haste to climb to the top of the heap of Tim Gregory’s out there on the internet, I’ve been given the equivalent of a Google yellow card.

I decided to start blogging last week, and got started on a Wordpress hosted blog. After a couple of days I realised how limited the platform was without being able to install Wordpress plugins, and decided to register a vanity domain and start blogging on my own Wordpress installation. I registered this domain on the weekend and started blogging right away.

Of course, there were already a couple of posts on my Wordpress blog, so I cut them down to synopsis length and linked through to my new blog. I’ve also got a 24.com blog that I don’t really maintain, but it’s useful to put up a couple of links now and again to help the crawlers find new sites you might own. I went over to my 24.com blog and started using it to link in to my new Wordpress blog hosted on my own domain.
All good so far, and nothing too ‘black hat’ going on (in my opinion).
By Wednesday this week I was ranking at between position #6 and #11 in a Google search, and at position #1 for my name plus any of the following words – ‘SEO’, ‘agile’, ’scrum’.

I thought I was doing very well until I checked tonight, and couldn’t find myself listed on the first couple of pages of results in Google for my name. I’m certain that I’m not being blacklisted completely because it’s still possible to find some pages from my site through Google like my ‘About’ page and particular blog posts, but my front page has dissappeared and I no longer show up for the terms were previously ranking me in the #1 position.

Looks like I’ve fallen foul of Google’s ‘ageing filter’, also known as ‘the sandbox’. The very existence of the sandbox is disputed, but the general idea is that when Google comes across a newly registered domain that suddenly starts getting lots of inbound links, it temporarily penalises the site in an effort to combat spammers and overly aggressive SEO efforts.
New domain? – check!
Aggressive linking – check!
Blog getting syndicated to weird corners of the internet? – check!

A bit of internet research turns up the following info:

• SEO people started noticing the Sandbox effect around March 2004
• Websites launched after this date would not rank well for a few months, in spite of optimisation, good page rank, and good inbound links
• Newly launched sites seem to be affected most, but established sites that suddenly get 1000’s of inbound links can also find themselves in the Sandbox
• The length of time that sites spend in the sandbox varies from 1 month to 6 months+, with around 3 months being the norm
• The time in the sandbox appears to be related to how competitive the particular targetted keywords are – in my case I may be in the clink for a long stretch for the words I’ve chosen
• This effect appears to be a Google-only thing, and is not observed on other search engines

So what can be done to mitigate the effects of the Sandbox?

Not a lot it seems, beyond waiting for the Sandbox to time-out naturally.

The advice given is that whilst stuck in the Sandbox, one should keep adding keyword-rich pages to your site and continue to build incoming links.
It seems the best way to avoid the sandbox effect is to ensure that your domain has ‘aged’ before sending too many new links to it. This can be done by purchasing an existing domain for use in new projects, or by launching a preview/temporary site as early as possible with some relevant content in it to start building a few months worth of history on the site before use.
The advantage of continuing to build links while in the Sandbox is that the ‘new link’ penalty Google imposes on fresh incoming links is incurred whilst in the Sandbox and won’t affect the site once it’s released.

I’ve come across a couple of references to the sandbox effect online, like the one at seomoz.org, although some like seoibiza.com claim that the phenomenon doesn’t exist.

Anybody else experienced this or seen it in the wild?

Related posts:

1. First post!
2. SEO Update #2