My Travels on the Net

If you’ve launched a new website in the last couple of years, whether you know it or not you’ve encountered the Google Sandbox. What happens is that when you launch a new website, Google watches it for several months before displaying it in search results. This can be a big negative for a new company or an existing company using a new domain name. Google started the sandbox to make sure that websites they display in the search results are “real” websites and not just link farms or websites with duplicate content.

“Google Sandbox” is a rather euphemistic phrase. It should be called the “Google Quagmire”. SEO consultants have been trying to figure out how to get out of the sandbox since it first sent shock waves through the industry in 2004.

Andy Hagans—who knows his stuff when it comes to SEO—has written a very helpful article “Secrets to Beating the Sandbox” on what you can do to minimize the amount of time your website spends stuck in the sandbox and maximize the time it spends attracting visitors.