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
-
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
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 -
Dev Site Was Indexed By Google
Two of our dev sites(subdomains) were indexed by Google. They have since been made private once we found the problem. Should we take another step to remove the subdomain through robots.txt or just let it ride out? From what I understand, to remove the subdomain from Google we would verify the subdomain on GWT, then give the subdomain it's own robots.txt and disallow everything. Any advice is welcome, I just wanted to discuss this before making a decision.
Technical SEO | | ntsupply0 -
How is Google finding our preview subdomains?
I've noticed that Google is able to find, crawl and index preview subdomains we set up for new client sites (e.g. clientpreview.example.com). I know now to use "meta name="robots" and robots.txt) to block the search engines from crawling these subdomains. My question though, is how is Google finding these subdomains? We don't link to these preview domains from anywhere else, so I can't figure out how Google is even getting there. Does anybody have any insight on this?
Technical SEO | | ZeeCreative0 -
Google plus
" With a single Google search, you can see regular search results, along with all sorts of results that are tailored to you -- pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know" Would i be able to see my own post which i shared with someone in my Google plus circle, when i do a search ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Is the number at the top of google wrong
If I search a term, any term, Google states at the top 922,000 results (as an example). However, if you click the "O" in google at the bottom you can get the 2nd and 3rd and 4th page of results. Those numbers don't match. The result of my searches would show anywhere from 120-140 results, but the number at the top is in the tens of thousands if not millions. Am I missing something here? Shouldn't these numbers be the same?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
How can I see if my website was penalize by Google?
Hello, I have a website http://digitaldiscovery.eu that I have been working for 7 months. Everything is alright in the index of the search engines like Google, Bing e Yahoo. I also have like 1000 visits a month wich is not bad for the topic Im pointing at in my country. However my pagerank insist to be on 0, and I really dont understand why. Some of the my competitors that started at the same time, already have a pagerank of 3 and they do not have the same visitors that I do. In the rank system of Alexa im climbing very fast and the visits of my website are growing. So why does the pagerank dont climb aswell?! Tks in advance, Pedro M Pereira
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Google Website Optimizer
So if you are AB testing two pages: index.html and indexB.html Shouldn't I nofollow indexB.html? It has all the same content, just a different design.
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0