What is Google Sandbox Effect?

In simple words it is one type of restriction for newer websites by not allowing them to get higher rankings in google search engine. A new website with quality backlinks and even with good content does not receive higher rankings for important keywords and phrases for certain period of time. The sanbox effect is also one type of test for newer websites, as google wants the best websites or quality content oriented websites or established websites to be listed first to provide quality results to users. It is also used to stop spam websites getting popular quickly. There are many webmasters who purchases lot of links very quickly and wants their website to get listed on 1^st place for highly competitive keywords from the day of launch. Google’s policy strongly opposes of buying/selling links and hence purchase and sales of backlinks is violation of terms of google.

Especially those websites come under the scanner of google sandbox effect very quickly which tries to get higher rankings for highly competitive keywords and phrases. One can avoid from getting their websites to sandbox effect by targeting less competitive keywords, so that google might have no point in applying filter for such websites, however still risk remains intact as this is just a thought or strategy.

Website once placed under the scanner of google sandbox is kept away from higher ranking for the period of one to six months. It highly depends upon the keywords targeted. It is believed that websites targeting highly competitive keywords takes full six month period to get out of it and websites targeting less competitive keywords come out of it quite sooner than it.

It is very easy to determine whether the website is under sandbox effect or not. If a website does not receives good SERP’S (Search Engine Ranking Position) for very less competitive or less important keywords then it is quite confirmed that the said website is in google sandbox effect. Also the said website doesn’t shows any pagerank or pagerank displayer of google toolbar turns grey in case of such penalty.

It is also believed that there is no real escape from the google sandbox effect for the website which is trapped once. The effect of it will surely get decreased as time passes on. So once you had discovered that your website is in sandbox effect then you had found ideal time for increasing your backlinks, as sandbox solves two filters at once. Don’t purchase paid links as it is violation of google terms, grow it your own way. You can use techniques like article marketing, directory submissions, blog commenting, forum posting and other various techniques. While using directory submission technique it is highly recommended to do manual directory submissions to get your site listed in accurate category and also in order to get good approval ratio.

Work meanwhile for improvement of content of your website and try enriching it with high quality content. Also it is highly advised not to get solely dependent on Google search engine for traffic. Also use alternative source of traffic like social bookmarking, adwords etc….

Google Sanbox Effect is still a topic of debate as many SEO experts doubt on the existence of google sandbox. SEO experts argue that google doesn’t uses any such different filters like google sandbox and it is an existing part of current algorithm calculations of google. But from reliable sources google had admitted of having such an effect, however it is not yet accepted by them publicly.