Regardless of whether you believe that there actually is a ‘Google Sandbox’ or not, you should keep in mind the fact that Google establishes quality (of your site or web page) using time-based indicators. Now these indicators could be related to the site’s link profile (link age), the site itself (domain age) or maybe some other factors as well. The reality is that no one can pretend to know exactly what factors Google uses or how it uses them.
Google uses time-based indicators to establish trust in a website. The best way to take advantage of these is to continue your regular link building practices but get the ‘best’ links as early as possible, and to factor time into your ranking expectations. Whereas you can rank for your target terms in a month or two in MSN and in 2 to 4 months in Yahoo, Google can make you wait for as long as an year and in really competitive niches, more than that. Of course, in very competitive niches you also have aggressive competitors to contend with who probably already have a head start on you. Get lots of relevant, authoritative, trustworthy links, and then wait. If you want to take advantage of these time-based indicators, here are a few simple rules:
- Go for quality 4-in-1 links (links that are relevant, authoritative, are from trusted sources and from high PageRank web pages / sites).
- Start your website today, and start building those links today too. Every day you spend not working on your link building is another day you are wasting in getting top rankings in Google.
- Get your best links – the ones that will deliver the most ‘trust’ – first.
How can you benefit from the Google Sandbox?
Site age and link age delivers plenty of trust, so old websites with a good link profile tend to have good rankings in Google in face of young websites with more links. If you have an already-established website and have done some link building in the past, chances are that it will already have passed the ‘trust’ test and will be ‘out’ of the Sandbox.
Established sites have a clear advantage over new websites and Google’s quality factors perpetuate that advantage. The downside is that if your website does not have great link profile and has not passed Google’s quality indicators, you will have to follow the same path as other new websites (although you will still manage to ‘get out’ of the Sandbox quicker).
