What is Google Sandbox? How to Exit the Sandbox?

Google Sandbox is a somewhat metaphorical term that explains why most new websites rank very low on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). If you have not dealt with SEO or similar studies before, you may not be aware of the concept of “Sandbox”. In this blog post, we will examine what is Google Sandbox and its function in SEO.

What is the Function of Google Sandbox?

Google Sandbox is a kind of filter placed on new websites. With this filtering, the website cannot rank high for important keywords and keyword groups. Even good quality content, links and a strong page rank can be negatively affected by the sandbox effect. The sandbox acts as a de facto probation for websites. With this application, it prevents spam sites from rising as well as preventing them from being banned and repeated.

This view, which Google has been using in its algorithms since March 2004, is accepted by experts. Google has acknowledged the existence of such a reality by observing its behavior. This accepted general rule behind the Google Sandbox is important in terms of enabling Google to distinguish outdated websites from those that offer quality and up-to-date content; to provide searchers with search results that are somewhat more proven to be reliable and to provide them with the right content.

Sandbox Analysis

How do you know if your website is in the Sandbox? Most new websites will be included in the filter in the Sandbox area when Google discovers the site. What Googlebot crawls will find the site by following the link from the other site. Then, when you search for the actual domain name, you will see the website in the regular SERP, but it is highly unlikely that the website will be listed for any of its keywords. At this stage, Google will not show any pointers to other websites linking to your website, nor will it show pages related to yours. In addition, it does not list pages other than your main (index) page.

If you monitor your website’s visitor statistics while in the Google Sandbox, you can also see that Googlebot comes in regularly, crawls all your pages and therefore catalogs them. In short, your website and its pages are under surveillance in the “Sandbox”.

How Long Will My Website Stay in the Google Sandbox?

It is difficult to say how long a website will stay in the Google Sandbox, because it depends on the types of keywords it will complete in the SERP. This can take 6-8 months and the only way out is to wait for the Sandbox. If your website has sufficient and relevant content, it will get out of the sandbox and get the rankings it deserves in Google SERP.

And Google is not the only search engine on the internet. With Microsoft behind Bing, it is likely to become a bigger player in the search engine world in the near future. And don’t forget the advantage for your new websites that you can start driving traffic to your site faster here, as there is currently no ‘Sandbox’ filter in Bing or Yahoo!