Yes, Virginia, there Is a Sandbox!

Most have known it for some time. We’ve seen it in action. We’ve heard others gripe about it. Yet, for some reason, the debate lingered.

Did Google really have a “sandbox”?

Though evidence mounted, there was always a cadre of webmasters and SEO-interested parties who would claim that something other than the sandbox effect was responsible for newer and/or recently “renovated” sites that had previously enjoyed Google action suddenly experiencing massive drop-offs.

Now, however, we know that is was the sandbox.

Axandra reports:

“Google has recently filed a patent that details many points that Google uses to rank web pages. The title of the patent is “Information retrieval based on historical data” and it confirms the existence of the Google sandbox and that it can apply to all web pages.”

So, if you’ve been a sandbox denier it’s time to recalibrate your thinking. New sites might get the treatment, rendering them nearly invisible to Google users’ eyes for six to eight months. Older sites that are changed substantially might suffer a similar fate.

If your site does end up playing with the other kids in the sandbox, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. Sure, you’re going to have a rough go of things for awhile until you’re released. But there are a few things you can do while you wait out your time in the search engine equivalent of purgatory.

First, keep on building your site. Eventually, the sun will come up and it’ll be set free to roam the SERPs. It might as well be looking good and fully loaded when it emerges.

Second, there’s no rule against link building during sandbox days. Keep working to get attention and inbound links while it sits patiently.

Third, use the down time as an opportunity to find other non-search traffic streams. You could experiment with article or video marketing and other techniques, for instance. None of this stuff is going to hurt your site and you might just discover that you can develop a great additional source of traffic that won’t even be reliant upon Google.