Making efforts and then getting your desired result bring you overwhelming joy and happiness. But what if all went in vain, or if doing a lot of hard work doesn’t yield you fruitful results.
We know that it may sound very disappointing. But don’t you think you should figure out the critical factor that is keeping you from achieving your goal?
We do understand that there could be various factors such as web design, marketing campaign or overall approach contributing towards your success as long as search engine optimization is concerned.
It is therefore, essential for understanding how Google ranks your websites. What are the reasons that can be the cause for getting your website hold back by the google? We are essentially talking about Google sandbox. If you are well aware of the approach for dealing with Google Sandbox, the result could be far better than becoming frustrated for no good reason.
Table of Contents
What is Google Sandbox?
Google Sandbox is a filter in place for new websites. It is incorporated to bar the websites from ranking, specifically those containing competitive keywords. This provision is placed to make site become more established and to allow Google to determine the overall content and purpose of the website.
Hundreds and thousands of websites are launched daily, and many of them are built in such a way that they try to manipulate the criteria set by Google ranking to get more clicks. Google want a website to be competent enough to rank amongst top websites. Therefore, Google Sandbox automatically filter out sites containing scam content.
Google Sandbox Existence – A Reality or Myth?
Many people seem to be arguing about the real existence of Google Sandbox. Although, Google has never confirmed the presence of Google Sandbox, however, there are a lot of reasons that are sufficient to make one believe that Google Sandbox does exist. It helps Google in search engine optimization.
Gossips around the world concerning the existence of Google Sandbox erupted recently after Gary Illyes tweeted and denied its existence.
We should understand that Google doesn’t need to confirm the existence of Google Sandbox, it should automatically be understood that sites containing useless content will never be ranked good by the Google until they believe them to be appropriate to display.
Google Sandbox And Its Impact On My Site?
It all depends on competitive keywords density. People try to use more competitive keywords to make their websites top ranked. Google Sandbox filters out low-quality sites but sometimes website containing rich content may also become the victim of Google Sandbox.
The most prominent impact is concerned with getting more or less clicks. When the Google Sandbox traps your website you are likely to get fewer clicks since your site is not going to appear as frequently as it could have appeared outside the Sandbox. It is quite apparent that if your website is not being displayed when people are searching for it, you are less likely to get as many clicks as you deserve. It may appear to you that you are not on the right track as far as selection of competitive keywords is concerned. This may not necessarily be the case though.
Besides following best practices concerning SEO rules, you may still get stuck in the Sandbox, and resultantly you will receive less traffic diverted towards your website as compared to your expectations.
Why Google Has A Filter In Place Such As Sandbox?
Google has Sandbox in place because your first impression means a lot to Google. When you launch a website, it appears in Google search until they are not sure about the quality of your site. Google may take some time speculating the way you dress up your website, as they want to make sure if your website really deserves to be ranked amongst top sites.
Many people deliberately use false tactics to ditch Google search engine to have more views. This leads to a bad quality of search for the public. Although, they may become successful in catching more traffic as compared to those website having rich and meaningful content. But this is not going to work for long.
Google knows it very well, and therefore to maintain the integrity of the search engine and make it more useful for people, Google filters out sites that have no or less meaningful resources. So there is no need to panic, once Google has identified your site being content rich, it will automatically start popping up your site in search engine and would rank you reasonably.
How Long Does the Google Sandbox Filter Last?
As a common thought, it is estimated that Google Sandbox lasts for a maximum of Six months.
The duration of its existence depends upon some of the following factors.
- Content of your Website
- Keywords Density
- Your Website Niche
Google Sandbox targets different niches in different timings using different tactics. If your website falls into a category of following many black hat rules for SEO then it is likely that your website is going to stay in a Google Sandbox a bit longer as compared to websites practicing white hat SEO rules.
It is therefore always suggested to stop wasting your time in predicting how long your website is going to stay in the sandbox. Instead, your focus should be on maintaining good SEO practices to avoid your site from getting trapped by the sandbox next time. Make sure to do the best, and we believe you’ll be successful for sure in getting more traffic than ever before.
Five (05) Ways to Keep Your Site Safe From Google Sandbox
Below we have mentioned five ways that you can use to avoid Google Sandbox.
- Always make sure that you are following best SEO practices
- Always try to add high-quality links to your website
- Always make sure to keep your website updated with latest and relevant content
- Always keep updating the last modification tag on your web pages since it reflects Google that your site is being regularly updated
- It is always a great idea to use robots.txt and sitemap.xml files on your website, since doing so make it easy to understand your website for Google crawlers and ultimately this will increase your chance of getting out of the sandbox earlier than expected
Remember doing everything perfectly still, doesn’t guarantee you that your website is going to be ranked well on the top.
Black Hat Rules For SEO
Let us tell you a little about Black Hat SEO. As the name suggests, these are the tactics that are used by people to manipulate search engines and get their website ranked amongst top webpages falsely.
Some typical examples of Black HAT SEO include word stuffing, sneaky redirects, links manipulation or automated content.
White Hat Rules For SEO
These are simple rules for following best SEO practices. These rules are used by web developers to make their site top ranked.
Although, following White Hat SEO rules are more difficult as compared to those Black Hat SEO rules but their results are long-lasting.
Conclusion
Since now you know what it is all about Google Sandbox and SEO practices; therefore we would like to suggest you practice best SEO rules always to keep the quality of research up to the mark for everyone.
Following White Hat Rules will surely prevent your site from getting trapped by the Google Sandbox, and soon you will see your site being ranked amongst top websites.
Freddy G. Cabrera says
Hey Aka!
Very interesting post on the Google Sandbox topic.
Recently, I went through a SEO course and learned more about this “google sandbox” a lot of people talk about a lot in this realm.
The sandbox used to be very strict (a few years ago) and backlinks were a big factor. If you gave your web pages a huge amount of backlinks all of a sudden, meaning that you “bought” backlinks from somewhere, your web pages would get penalized by Google (sandboxed). What happened is that when everyone knew about this, competitors in niches started to use this as a way to get websites sandboxed by buying massive amounts of backlinks for them.
Basically, if you wanted to get one of your competition’s website sandboxed by Google all you had to do was go to a place like fiverr.com and buy thousands of crappy backlinks to their website. And there you have taken down the competition.
Google learned about this and changed their “sandbox” algorithm. We can safely say that backlinks are not a factor to be worried about with Google.
This is something very helpful to know!
Just sharing what I’ve learned!
Cheers! 😀
Aka Sam says
@Freddy Thanks for liking the stuff. Back links are important aspect and it would remain a important aspect of Google SERP for a long time to come. Things change …we just need to adopt to those changes.
I went to your site via your comment, Can you tell me more about this solo ads thing on your site?
Donald says
Thank you for your post, Before i couldn’t understand about google sandbox
Aka Sam says
@Donald, Great that you Liked It. Cheers!
Gaurav Kumar says
Hi Aka,
Google sandbox is an effective way for Google to make sure that useless sites wont rank. Google always focus on giving the best result to its users and that is why it is search engine giant.
Thanks for sharing.
Rewari says
Hello Aka,
Great piece of information overe here 🙂
Aka Sam says
Hello @Rewari,
Thanks for liking the article.
Cheers!
Vis B. says
Google can deny existance of the Sandbox because they use different terminology for it. Call it a filter, a box, or an algorithm, whatever, but if you look at search results for some new website you quickly discover that indeed something is going on. What is the cause? I think SEO pros need to device an alternative explanation, because the existing idea that is due to preventing spam websites is insufficient. When a new website starts it’s existence what happens? The website’s owner gets tones of phone calls from AdWords certified partners and SEOs to get his business going. And if you check the facts, which aren’t easy to get from Google, Google basically is ONE product company, which makes 97% of their revenue and that’s AdWords! So, during the time the Sandbox is in effect, website owners will certainly consider to improve search results with AdWords and will put some $$ into paid advertising. So, the implications of such tactics are quite different than fighting spam.