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The Sandbox Effect is a theory used to explain certain behaviours observed with the Google search engine. The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence. ^[1] Webmasters have claimed that their site will only show for keywords that are not competitive^{citation needed}. It appears this effect does not affect new pages unless the domain is in the sandbox.

There are many different opinions about it, including the view that the Sandbox Effect doesn't actually exist and that the search ranking behaviour can be explained as a result of a mathematical algorithm, rather than a decided policy^{citation needed}.

Those who believe the sandbox exists observe that it can sometimes take up to a year or longer for a website to be promoted from the Google sandbox, while those who do not believe in a sandbox explain this duration as simply the time it takes for Google to calculate PageRank using an "eigenpairs interpretation of nodes".

Those who believe in the "sandbox effect" (such as Searchguild.com) consider it a "policies" based approach by Google, whereas some mathematicians believe it is simply an algorithmic effect.

Regardless of interpretation, it is widely accepted that new Websites and Webpages do wait longer for ranking in Google than other search engines^{citation needed}.

It is observed that adding Adsense to a new website in the first few weeks of propagation will flag the website to Google and will expedite the Sandbox Effect and elongate the process where its Pagerank moves from a solid bar to PR-0 or more depending on its link popularity.

Such alleged "decided" policy by Google to handle spam websites abusing Google and Adsense, has a detrimental negative effect on the good work of knowledgeable webmasters of legitimate sites that would othewise have high organic visibility in Google. Yahoo! does not seem to have such a policy.

Community reaction

Since Google is the dominant search engine on the Internet, this "sandbox effect" has distressed webmasters^who? who see their websites included in Yahoo! and MSN in a short period of time, but not in Google despite following Google's own guidelines.^{citation needed}

It is thought, by some^[2], that the sandbox is a measure taken by Google to avoid spam websites abusing search engine optimization techniques to reach the top of the index, getting barred by Google, and then repeating the process using a different domain.^{citation needed} Yet another explanation is Google's "supplemental" index.^{citation needed}

Google's sandbox appeared to be put in place in March 2004.^{citation needed}

References

1. ^ webpronews.com article [1]
2. ^ fletchergiglio.com article [2]

External links

• What Is The Google Sandbox Effect?
• Sandboxed by Google? What It is - and How to Fix It
• Sandbox Theory