In a previous post I described the 302 temporary redirect from the blog that originally had most of the content that now appears on this site. The idea of the 302 redirect is to make sure that my other site's pages don't get removed from Google's index before the content on this site is included. You'd think both of these evens would happen at the same time, but there's no way to know for sure that they will.
Anyway, today I decided to take a look at my sandbox status. There's actually no way to official check this, but you can infer a new site's status by checking a few things. First off, using the site:searchgrit.com on Google showed me that I've gone from 0 to 52 indexed pages. That's pretty good considering all but a handful of the pages existed elsewhere to begin with. From this I'm inferring that this new blog may have stepped out of the sandbox quickly. In addition, the content isn't being penalized for being duplicate. At least, not yet.
A quick look at my Google Analytics data revealed that I'm even getting organic traffic from Google albeit a very small amount so far. Even better, my site is ranking 5 out of 7+ million for the search term "google holiday images" which is the title of one of my posts. Obviously not a popular search term, but important to me since ranking for something again means this site is not being penalized for anything and it's newness isn't preventing it from being included in Google's search results.
Related SEO/SEM Articles:- Redirects and SEO
- SEO for Every Day with Rachael Ray: Google Sandbox
- Would a Domain By Any Other Name Be As Sweet?
- Accidental 404 Errors... Ugh.
- Google's Ranking Penalty
Entries (RSS)
I believe my site is in the Google sandbox because it isn't ranked at all.
I have done my fair of SEO before, but believe it is there because the site was so new and purchased a large amount of links .. just wanted to give anyone a heads up NOT to do this as I now have to wait for awhile.
I hope to see a big boost though once Google lets me out!
If you're not already signed up, join the Google Sitemaps program. The service offers some diagnostic reports that might point you to a problem or penalty. It certainly doesn't have all the answers, but it's worth looking at all the available information.
What sort of time do you estimate to Google sandbox penalty to be? Any tips for escaping it quicker?
Inkode,
Links from a lot of high-quality sources i.e. not paid directories can apparently get you out of the sandbox. Such links usually require being a celebrity of some sort or having an exceptional product/service. I always assume a new site will be sandboxed and I choose to just wait for it to come out naturally rather than spinning my wheels.
Cool post. I would also want to know some tips for escaping it quicker. Also will be great if in this post a link to a Google Sandbox Check tool. Will be a great link bate as well.
I'd be interested in a link to a Google Sandbox checking tool as well.
Ant