Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How long is the google sandbox these days?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How long is the google sandbox these days?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    5
    2988
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • BobGW
      BobGW last edited by

      Hello,

      I'm putting up a new site for the first time in a while.

      How long is the Google Sandbox these days, and what has changed about it. Before it was 6 months to 1 year long.

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Vegit
        Vegit last edited by

        There is a sandbox, and there will be chances to get hit by you, if you are competing for extreme competitive keywords. Then Google will put you under sandbox. As far as i heard on other forums, they got recovered from sandbox from 3-6 months.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
        • Mcarle
          Mcarle last edited by

          Google no longer has a sandbox, Google also no longer has a quarterly "dance"

          Currently a new site can be submitted and indexed in just a few hours.

          You can submit direct using Google webmaster tools, and for extra juice I would get links to the site from another well trafficked site.

          SERPS  show up instantly if a site is crawled fast enough, I have seen forums get indexed in five minutes from a first posting.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • GIGS20
            GIGS20 last edited by

            There is no exact time after which a site will get out of the sanbox affect. It can be 2 or 3 months, it depends how many quality link you are building on a monthly basis.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -2
            • EGOL
              EGOL last edited by

              I don't think that there is a sandbox.  A new site can be launched  and not have  any problems that people call a "sandbox".

              I think that the problem is.... other websites scrape new content from you and post it on their site... then you  get filtered.  I think that has been happening for years but since nobody believes that is true they call it a "sandbox".

              I know that this comment is going to get me a lot of thumbs down.    🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 6
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • CarolynSC

                Does google ignore ? in url?

                Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC
                0
              • ioannisa

                Mass Removal Request from Google Index

                Hi, I am trying to cleanse a news website.  When this website was first made, the people that set it up copied all kinds of articles they had as a newspaper, including tests, internal communication, and drafts.  This site has lots of junk, but this kind of junk was on the initial backup, aka before 1st-June-2012.  So, removing all mixed content prior to that date, we can have pure articles starting June 1st, 2012! Therefore My dynamic sitemap now contains only articles with release date between 1st-June-2012 and now Any article that has release date prior to 1st-June-2012 returns a custom 404 page with "noindex" metatag, instead of the actual content of the article. The question is how I can remove from the google index all this junk as fast as possible that is not on the site anymore, but still appears in google results? I know that for individual URLs I need to request removal from this link
                https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals The problem is doing this in bulk, as there are tens of thousands of URLs I want to remove.  Should I put the articles back to the sitemap so the search engines crawl the sitemap and see all the 404?  I believe this is very wrong.  As far as I know this will cause problems because search engines will try to access non existent content that is declared as existent by the sitemap, and return errors on the webmasters tools. Should I submit a DELETED ITEMS SITEMAP using the <expires>tag? I think this is for custom search engines only, and not for the generic google search engine.
                https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/indexing#on-demand-indexing</expires> The site unfortunatelly doesn't use any kind of "folder" hierarchy in its URLs, but instead the ugly GET params, and a kind of folder based pattern is impossible since all articles (removed junk and actual articles) are of the form:
                http://www.example.com/docid=123456 So, how can I bulk remove from the google index all the junk... relatively fast?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ioannisa
                0
              • bondhoward

                Do google counts YouTube backlinks?

                Does google count YouTube links in the video description

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward
                0
              • AWCthreads

                Google and Product Description Tabs

                How does Google process a product page with description tabs?  For example, lets say the product page has a tab for Overview, Specifications, What's In the Box and so on. Wouldn't that content be better served in one main product description tab with the tab names used as (htags) or highlighted paragraph separators? Or, does all that content get crawled as a single page regardless of the tabs?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads
                0
              • Atomicx

                Google is displaying wrong address

                I have a client whose Google Places listing is not showing correctly. We have control of the page, and have the address verified by postcard. Yet when we view the listing it shows a totally different address that is miles away and on a totally different street. We have relogged into manage the business listing and all of the info is correct. We dragged the marker and submitted it to them that they had things wrong and left a note with the right address. Why would this happen and how can we fix it? Right now they rank highly but with a blatantly wrong address.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx
                0
              • sbrault74

                Google Indexing Feedburner Links???

                I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault74
                0
              • Ouzan

                My own brand name disappeared from google?

                Hi, about 20-30 hours ago my own brand name disappeared from google results (We redirected old domain to new one about a month ago) My website is: www.websiteplanet.com If you search for Website Planet in google you will not find our homepage any longer.
                Not only that the brand name disappeared but we also dropped in rankings and lost about %50 of the organic traffic we had. It's important for me to say that we have never done any sort of blackhat or even greyhat SEO, at all. I could probably come up with many ideas of why it happened but maybe one of you mozzers already experienced this and could enlighten me. Will really appreciate any kind of response/help. Thanks.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ouzan
                0
              • hellemans

                Check Google ban on domainname

                Hello all, If I wanted to know if a domainname has a google ban on it would the following be a good idea to test it. Place an article on the domain page with unique content and then link to the page so its gets indexed and then link to the article from a well indexed page. If it doesn't get indexed there might be a ban on the page, if it does get indexed there is no ban on the page... Or are there other points I should keep in mind while doing this. All help is very welcome. Cheers, Arnout

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.