Google Sandbox – Real or Not?

The Sandbox is a phenomenon that people have claimed to observe in Google’s web page ranking process. Sandboxing or the sandbox effect or the Google penalty has been the subject of much debate, despite the lack of confirmation by Google that the practice of  reducing new domains’ rage rank to cut down on manipulation by black hat SEOs really exists.

Getting sent to the ‘Sandbox’ is therefore a punishment many new webmasters fear, and multiple theories exist on how to avoid being sandboxed or penalized. The main tactic which appears to include websites for punishment is using owned domains to create a huge amuont of inbound links to power up a new site.

A “reverse sandbox” effect has also been purported to exist. In this case, new pages with good content but without inbound links are temporarily increased in rank depending on Google’s evaluation of their worth.

According to webmaster David George, the claim that Google applies sandboxing to all new web sites “doesn’t seem to be borne out by experience”. He says”[n]o one knows for sure if the Google sandbox exists”, but adds it “seems to fit the observations and experiments of many search engine optimizers”. George is of the opinion that the sandbox “has introduced some hysteresis into the system in order to restore a bit of sanity to Google’s results.

Matt Cutts says”[t]here are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries”.

Whether the “sandbox’ exists or not, the main lesson is don’t try to artificially inflate PageRank – it could result in a time out in the penalty box!