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Is Google Using Another Sandbox? 
By: Chris Richardson 2006-06-05 The existence of the Google Sandbox has been topic of many a discussion across Internet forums everywhere... or at least the ones covering Internet technologies.
With all that talk going on, there's little surprise a consensus about whether or not the thing actually exists has not been reached. If you take a quick glance at one of WebProWorld's Sandbox discussions, this becomes quite clear: Pro: virtualtraveller - There are plenty of cases to show that new sites are sandboxed, usually for a period of about 6 months and you'll know when you are out because you will jump from the 500s to top 100 (if you have been busy getting links). Con: greeneagle - IMO - The "Sandbox" is nothing but the slag time it takes someone to do adequate competitive marketing (SEM) and finally rank against competitors in their specific competitive environment after launch, spidering and indexing has transpired! Yes there is a "perceived sandbox" as Matt indicated in PubCon, but it's just slag time before proving the site has some value to the "Internet Community", before establishing value through relevant SEM. As you can see, Google Sandbox discussions are normally a case of "never the twain shall meet" or "agree to disagree," etc. However, now that Google's Big Daddy update has taken hold, there is a new type of sandbox to be discussed, one that seems to affect how deeply the Googlebot crawls a site. As pointed out by WebProWorld member incrediblehelp, a Graywolf SEO Blog entry discusses this topic in great detail. The post terms the type of bot crawl in question as "superficial crawling," which Graywolf goes onto explain as: I'm calling 'sandbox crawling'. Here's the way I see it, if your website is missing the right 'quality indicators' what you'll start to see is superficial crawling and indexing of your website. Your site which may have had hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pages will just not be as well represented in Google's index as you would like it to be. You will still be indexed in some way, your home page for certain, and probably most of your first level pages for sure, but second-level, third-level and fourth level pages will remain largely untapped. Some of these "quality indicators" referred to by Graywolf include: Quality content A properly done Google sitemap Easy-to-use navigation Use of deep linking The quality content angle has been pushed on webmasters and developers for sometime now, but that doesn't change the fact Google prefers these types of sites to those with generated or perhaps stolen content (obviously). When you factor the Big Daddy update into the equation, it appears as if Google has taken steps to reward quality content, while giving less weight to these AdSense farm pages, although some WPW posters may disagree. Make sure your site's navigation and file hierarchy follows some kind of logical method. Don't just place site attributes anywhere on the page (or site files just anywhere on your server) and expect thorough crawl and index. Once the site's hierarchy and navigation is complete (or should I say completed logically), a Google Sitemap should then be created and submitted. As many of you may know, a properly developed Sitemap can improve the chances of complete site indexing, something every webmaster should be striving for. Another area touched on by Graywolf was the use of deep linking. His thoughts mirror that of other SEO gurus like Mike Grehan and Eric Ward, who have shared these very strategies at various SES conferences. Links pointing to content well past the index page can also play a big part in getting an entire site in Google's index. Gray also speaks about how black-hat SEOers can improve their situation in light of the "new Google Sandbox". For more information, please read his entire article. For those that don't exercise black-hat techniques, the tips spoke about above should vastly improve a site's "indexing potential," something all webmasters should be aware of whether they believe in the existence of Google Sandboxes or not. About the Author: Chris is a staff writer for iEntry, focusing on the search industry. |
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