Google Sandboxing
-
I have a new site with a new domain that ranked well the 1st week or so after it was indexed then it totally dropped off the SERP.
My question is, does Google Sandboxing affect new sites on new domains that don't have any incoming links? The site dropped off before I began link building - from what I've read unnatural link build is often the cause. Can you still be sandboxed without any link building?
If this is the case, are there things I can do to get out of the sandbox?
Thanks folks,
Jason
-
I would just give it a little time, and see what happens when you get a few links.
-
Thanks so much for the quick response EGOL. I'm quite sure this isn't a duplication content issue, it is a website for dental practice and all of the content is fresh and unique to them.
We're in planning stage of the link building process, this is tops on our list.
I was surprised to see the site drop completely out of the SERP for searches such as the practice name. When it does rank it is pages deep and a it is an internal page that is listed (as opposed to the index page).
In Yahoo and Bing the index page ranks within the top 5 results for the company name. In Google the index page ranked well for the 1st couple of weeks, now it doesn't rank at all except for really long tailed searches. I've created similar sites with strong results for similarly competitive keywords. But this is the 1st time I have experienced this and the only real difference was this site had a brand new domain and no existing site before.
-
First... new sites often go in and out of the SERPs for a few days to a couple of weeks. Hang in there you might be fine.
Second.. if you have very few links and especially if they are weak links you might need more power to stay in the SERPs.
Finally... is anyone republishing your feed or scraping your content? Search for a unique sentence or two from your site between quotation marks. A few years ago a powerful news site was republishing my feed and BAM.. my blog fell out of the SERPs like a ton of bricks. Almost completely gone but my content on that news site was up in the SERPs. I wrote to them and asked them to remove my feed and they were good guys about it. A couple weeks later I was back in the SERPs at full strength. I honestly believe that what people call "the sandbox" is often a duplicate content problem caused by feed republishing or scraper sites.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Domain not ranking in Google
https://www.buitenspeelgoed.nl/ is a domain acquired by our client. Previously this website was on http://www.buitenspeelgoed-keupink.nl. With the old domain they were ranking top 30 on 'buitenspeelgoed' in google.nl. Now with the new exact match domain they aren't ranking any more (for months). However, the website is indexed, as you can see on http://1l1.be/nz I don't know what to do anymore. Need some advise. What we allready have done the last months: made adjustments to the 301-redirects (this was originaly setup wrong by the webdesigner (de) optimized the homepage on 'buitenspeelgoed' (strange is the fact that the Moz robot can't access the site). Checked the robots.txt to see if the website was blocked for Google Checked the meta robots to see if the website was blocked for Google Disavowed some spammy (old) links which linked to the old domain Checked Search console > Fetch as Google if there isn't any Malware of some kind (and to see if Google can access the site) Checked Search consol to see if there manual spam actions (isn't the case) Checked for duplicate content by copy/paste some texts in Google and see if any other results are showing up (isn't the case for most of the texts) Please let me know what we can do.
Technical SEO | | InventusOnline0 -
Meta description issue on Google
Hello, I have a small issue on Google with our Meta Description tag not always being properly displayed. If you search for the term: Globe Car (in two words), everything is being displayed properly: http://screencast.com/t/YQCUkJnk Now do the same search for the term GlobeCar (in one word) and the meta tag set into our homepage seems to be totallly ignored and Google is now displaying something that is generated from out of their hat: http://screencast.com/t/K0KeeRGSgspV Anyone has an idea what would cause this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | GlobeCar1 -
Local Google vs. default Google search
Hello Moz community, I have a question: what is the difference between a local version of Google vs. the default Google in regards to search results? I have a Mexican site that I'm trying to rank in www.google.com.mx, but my rankings are actually better if I check my keywords on www.google.com The domain is a .mx site, so wouldn't it make more sense that this page would rank higher on google.com.mx instead of the default Google site, which in theory would mean a "broader" scope? Also, what determines whether a user gets automatically directed to a local Google version vs. staying on the default one? Thanks for your valuable input!
Technical SEO | | EduardoRuiz0 -
How to rank in Google Places
Normally, I don't have a problem with local SEO (more of a multi-channel sort of online marketing guy) but this one has got me scratching my head. Look at https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+venues+in+essex Theres two websites there (fennes and quendon park) that both have a much more powerful DA but don't appear in the Google Places (Google + Business or whatever it's labeled as). Why are websites such as Boreham house ranking top in the map listings? Quendon Park has a Google places listing, it's full of content, the NAP all matches up. Its a stronger website. Boreham House isn't any closer to the centroid than Quendon Park Just got me struggling this one
Technical SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Website is not indexed in Google
Hi Guys, I have a problem with a website from a customer. His website is not indexed in Google (except for the homepage). I could not find anything that can possibly be the cause. I already checked the robots.txt, sitemap, and plugins on the website. In the HTML code i also couldn't find anything which makes indexing harder than usual. This is the website i am talking about: http://www.xxxx.nl/ (Dutch) The only thing that i am guessing now is the Google sandbox, but even that is quite unlikely. I hope you guys discover something i could not find! Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | B.Great0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
What Google uses in search result descriptions
Recently, Google has started including certain information from our web pages in their search results description that is a bit puzzling. For example if you google 'Wedding Band Raleigh' the description they are using for our site's (GigMasters) page begins with the text 'Results 1 - 10 of 1005' Not sure why they are pulling that information. That is in on the page but its not high up on the page or marked with any special h1, h2, or h3 tag. We do have that information inside of a div which we have named 'Results'. Maybe that's why? Did we inadvertently use some sort of Google rich snippet or schema.org naming convention?! Any insight would be hugely appreciated.
Technical SEO | | gigmasters0