For those unfamiliar with it, the “Sandbox Effect” is the name given to the mysterious force which prevents newly-created sites from being able to rank for competitive search terms until said site has been indexed for a certain period of time, some speculate that this effect lasts anywhere from three to six months.
Regardless of how long it lasts, the Sandbox effect impedes efficiency in the market for information online. Serving as a barrier to entry, this effect penalizes new sites that may have better information or resources for a search term from being able to rank for that term, regardless of the number of links pointing at that site.
As a result, you may rest assured that the first page you see on google’s search results may not necessarily be from the most relevant or informative site on that subject, as the most informative and useful site may have actually been relegated to the “sandbox” if it is new enough.
Just my thoughts.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[...] from the search engines on longtail terms. Initially I chalked up the sudden fall in traffic to the Google Sandbox, although this conclusion didn’t exactly sit well with me, as the Sandbox generally [...]