What is the Google Sandbox?

The “ageing delay” commonly known as the Google Sandbox was designed to stop people setting-up multiple websites and pointing them to each other in a way to inflate link popularity. The Sandbox effects new website domain names by holding them in a sort of “online purgatory” state where any site hoping to rank well for any competitive keyword phrases will not appear in the search engine results for a period varying between 6 – 12 months. Nobody knows for sure how long it takes to get out of the Sandbox but it is vitally important to know it exists.

The Sandbox can have some very detrimental effects for small businesses that don't have the big marketing budget to get the word out there any other way. However, it does provide the company owner with the incentive to use the time within the Sandbox to carefully optimize their site so once it gets out it can jump straight into the top 10 – 30 results.

The Google Sandbox shouldn't be a reason for too much woe. New sites aren't affected in the same way when it comes to getting listed in Yahoo and MSN, so website owners can benefit from traffic from these other websites whilst they continue to optimize for the big day when they are let out of the website into the Google search results.

How do I get out of it?

To put it very simply… you can't. Getting in to it is the first thing you should be doing. If you don't have a few links pointing from other websites to your site Google will never know it exists in the first place.

So what can you do?

Create valuable inbound links so that the googlebot spider can find your website in the first place and put it into the Sandbox.

List your site within directories that can provide you with a steady stream of visitors.

Conduct a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture to drive visitors to your site.

Think creatively and conduct any off-line marketing campaigns that will send visitors to your site.

Most importantly…

Take the time to develop your website and business in such a way so that when a large amount of visitors start to arrive from the Google search results you'll be ready and able to deal with this increase in traffic.

Analyze your website statistics so you can see where people come from and where they go to. Once a person visits your website they will be very quick to judge what they do and don't like.

If you can understand at the early stages of your online presence what your visitors don't like and where and why they leave before buying, inquiring, or whatever it is you want them to do on your site it will help you streamline your website in such a way that when you are released from the Sandbox you will be better able to provide them with an excellent service.