If you are in the process of building out a free website, then you may have heard of the “Google Sandbox”. No, it is not a playground. Quite the opposite, in fact. It refers to Google intentionally suppressing a website from showing up in search results on a probationary basis, if it suspects any abusive attempts to game the search engine results.
Because Google ranks websites according to their relevance, it needs to ensure that the websites it returns in its search results are not the result of “search engine spamming”. Over the years, many SEO experts had figured how to “game the system” and “brute force” their way to the top of Google’s search results using “black hat”, or “unethical” ranking techniques. So Google countered by developing this ethereal “sandbox” where websites go for a temporary period as a penalty. During the time a website is in this “sandbox”, Google intentionally suppresses it from search results.
How Does Your Website Get Into the Google Sandbox?
The easiest way to get your website sandboxed by Google is to “link bomb” it. This is the process of creating an excessive number of inbound links (known as “back links”) to your website too quickly, in a manner that looks unnatural. Google rewards websites where links are built to it gradually and naturally, over the course of time. If a website were to get 10,000 back links to it in one day, then Google will suspect you of deliberately gaming the search engine rankings. Your site will be sandboxed. It will not show up in the search results until Google determines that your website is either NOT spam, or until it determines what your TRUE ranking SHOULD be.
Other ways that your website runs the risk of being sent to the Google sandbox include:
- Keyword stuffing – You use one or more keywords on your webpage an excessive number of times, thinking that Google will reward you for your content being more “relevant” with respect to the keyword. (For example, you have a 500 word article in which the same keyword shows up more than 50 times.)
- Paid back links from link farms – There are services out there that will create back links to your site for you, for a fee. Google is catching on and starting to sandbox sites that it finds are being linked to from these link farms.
- Excessive reciprocal links between two or more websites – Google flags this as being an obvious attempt to game the system as well, if this link reciprocation is not seen as beneficial to the reader but only for the purposes of ranking in Google.
- Duplicate content – If Google sees that duplicate versions of your web content are showing up on the Internet and finds that you are trying to spam the search results unnaturally, one or more duplicate copies of your content can be sandboxed, if not all of them. However, there are legitimate ways that duplicate content can show up on the Internet, such as content syndication and press releases.
There are many other black hat techniques that can get your site sandboxed, but the above four are the most common, and are common mistakes that many novice webmasters make, who make a website and then try to get it ranked, but weren’t aware that what they were trying to do was banned by Google.
Also, new websites are almost always more likely to get sandboxed than older, more established websites. Newer websites have no established credibility, and thus Google looks upon them with greater suspicion. Older, more established websites, have been around for a long time, and thus have already gained Google’s trust and are less likely to be sandboxed.
How Do You Get Out Of the Sandbox?
Once your website gets into the sandbox, the best cure is to let Google run its course. Time heals all wounds, as the saying goes. But what you CAN do is implement a strategy of building good quality, relevant back links at a slow and steady pace. Google will take notice of your redemptive efforts and lift the ban on your site sooner than later.
