What is the Sandbox?

The term “sandbox” was coined by webmasters to represent the time that a new website must wait before it is listed for a competitive keyword in Google. Much like how children first play in the safety of a small sandbox, Google also forces new websites to do their time before joining the older kids on the rest of the playground. The sandbox process is difficult to explain, since Google claims it does not officially exist. But tests by webmasters have confirmed its existence and effect on newly created websites.

The first thing that happens to any new website in Google is what some call the “fresh boost”. This is when the website is allowed to rank freely among the other sites often on the first three pages of the search results. This fresh boost usually lasts for about a month or two and is monitored by Google to see how well the site performs and how much it grows in terms of content and backlinks.

If the site passes Google’s fresh boost test it is allowed to remain in the rankings. The problem is that 99% of sites fail this test and are sent into the sandbox for a period of time that can last for nine months or more. No one really knows what needs to be done in order to pass Google’s test, but there are many ideas as to what Google is looking for. These often include authority back links from established and trusted sites such as DMOZ or Wikipedia. Basically, the idea is that if the bigger kids allow you to play with them, you get to stay. If you can’t manage to gain the trust of Google and authority sites in the allotted time, you are sent into the sandbox as an un-trusted or spam site.

Once in the sandbox there is no proven way out. Many say they have gotten out by a mass flood of links, but building such a massive amount of links can get a site banned from Google altogether. Many webmasters would rather wait and do their time than get banned, since it is extremely hard to get a domain un-banned from Google. The best thing you can do is continue to go about building your site and ignore the fact that you’re even in there. Use the time to add content to your site and continue to build back links from other websites. Once your time is up, you will have proven to Google that your site can be trusted and will be allowed to rank for highly searched keywords once again.

While in the sandbox you will still be indexed and listed in Google for non-competitive keywords and low-search volume terms. The sandbox only affects certain keywords and certain pages within your site, so you will still receive traffic from Google just not as much as you will in a year’s time. If you’re trapped in the sandbox, don’t worry. You will get out some day, and while you’re waiting for Google to trust you remember there is always Yahoo! and MSN.

There is a new bot in Town: msnbot/1.1

MSN Crawler Improvements for Live Search

Today, Microsoft announced changes to their Live Search crawler intended to reduce bandwidth resources during the crawl of a site. MSNbot (upgraded to version 1.1) now supports both HTTP compression and conditional get.

• HTTP Compression: HTTP compression allows faster transmission time by compressing static files and application responses, reducing network load between your servers and our crawler. Use this online tool to check your server for HTTP compression support.
• Conditional Get: We support conditional get as defined by RFC 2616 (Section 14.25), generally we will not download the page unless it has changed since the last time we crawled it. To check if your site already supports the "If-Modified-Since" HTTP header, you can use this online tool to check your server for HTTP Conditional Get support. Alternatively, you can check using Fiddler for Internet Explorer, or Live Headers for Firefox. Each of these tools allows you to create a custom GET request and send it to your server. You'll want to make sure that your request includes the "If-Modified-Since" header like the following simplified sample:
  GET /sa/3_12_0_163076/webmaster/webmaster_layout.css HTTP/1.1
  Host: webmaster.live.com
  If-Modified-Since: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:28:49 GMT
  You should receive a server response similar to the following simplified sample:
  HTTP/1.x 304 Not Modified

Check out MSDN for more information on using Fiddler for performance tuning.
If you have not yet configured conditional get on your site, we would strongly encourage you to do so, as it can significantly help reduce server load as most browsers and crawlers already support this feature (e.g. IIS, Apache).
In addition to these two features there are many more improvements in performance that should help further optimize our crawling. As a result, we've also upgraded our user agent to reflect the changes, it is now "msnbot/1.1". If you think you are experiencing any issues with MSNbot, or have any questions about the updates, please use our Crawler Feedback & Discussion form.

What are Link Farms and why to NOT use Them

What is a Link Farm?

Link farms profit by providing the same types of links that search engines want you to avoid. A link farm will sell you 100's of "high quality" links to your site, none of which have any relavance to what you do. The theory being that more links equates to higher search ranking.

This practice is one of many that fall under "Black Hat SEO" and, it is very dangerous if you want to maintain a web presence. If a search engines find a Link Farm that you are involved with your site can be "blacklisted" by, making it almost impossible to find your site.

How to recognize a Link Farm:

• Require reciprocal linking – this means that you have to put a link to their site, before you can have a link on their site. If you come across this don’t do it.
• Laundry list of sites on a Deep Level Page with no description about the site.
• Unsolicited emails telling you how great your site is and you should form a partnership with them.
  In some cases, there will be a page called “Link Partners” or “Links”.
• No discrimination for sites included.
• Ask for a link on your links page even if you don’t have one.

If you should run across sites that have one or many of the characteristics, do not participate. Contact TaosW3 if you are still not sure.