Google Sandbox Effect: Pros and cons

If you are into SEO business for quite sometime now, then you must have heard about Google sandbox effect. It is really a nightmarish experience for those who have already had their site banned. Sand is a program of Google computer security; a safety system for secure operation of other programs. It is very often used to carry out untested codes or programs from untested third-parties and dubious users. As a search engine, if Google find anything insecure and obstructive for its smooth running, then it adopts “Sandbox Effect” for these kinds of sites.

According to many people Google sandbox effect is a penalty that does not allow new web sites to rank well in the search results of Google, even not for the least competitive phrases or keywords irrespective of a high page rank and good link popularity. Even if your site is better than your competitors, it will still be in the Sandbox for a certain amount of time. Often, new websites can find themselves in the Sandbox for 6-9 months during which traffic to the site is severely restricted. This also depends on how competitive your new web site's market and keywords are.

The website owners adopt various unethical techniques to get higher rank within very short period to get higher ranks in SERPs. They usually do so to get more and more number of inbound links to increase their link popularity as Google uses link popularity as one of its criteria to rank web sites in its search engine. Hence, Google uses the sandbox filter to discourage these web site owners.

There is no such way to know whether a new web site is in the Sandbox or not. But the only way to determine whether your site is sandboxed or not is to find out if your web site has enough of quality inbound links, rich quality content and a good ranking in other search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN. Alternatively, it can also be determined by checking the page rank bar on tool bar; if it appears to be grey then it is sandboxed. And, if it is no where present in Google SERPs for your keywords then this clearly means that your site has been victim of Google sandbox effect. There in no such concept called Yahoo Sandbox in Yahoo and other search engines do not have such filters either.