Well, I’m not really sure when you’ll end up reading this, but as of today, this blog, UberBlogger, is playing in the Google Sandbox. I find this rather odd, since it only has a handful of (admittedly bad) blog posts on it, and only a few links pointed at it. I’ve been far more aggressive with much thinner sites before, and can honestly say I’ve never been sandboxed this hardcore before.
What do I mean by “sandboxed this hardcore?” Well, whereas this site ranked at the top of the SERPS for both uber blogger and uberblogger, (typed without the quotes in Google) as of today it ranks nowhere in the top 1000 results. I have no idea where it is. If I do use quotes in my search, still nothing for “uber blogger,” but for “uberblogger” I’m in the top ten.
If you don’t know what the sandbox is, there are plenty of other sites that talk about it in great depth, including Wikipedia. Basically it’s a sort of penalty applied to a site’s ranking in Google, supposedly for doing things that Google thinks are naughty. It’s speculated that these things range from writing about “spammy” subjects, to getting too many inbound links too quickly. I use words like “supposedly” and “speculated” because Google won’t admit to its existence, and therefor they obviously aren’t talking about the things that may or may not trigger sandboxing. The only evidence people have of this phenomenon is various personal experience by people who’ve made a lot of websites and done a lot of testing. I am not one of those people.
However, I’ve made quite a few websites, and I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve felt like I’ve been sandboxed. Sure, sometimes some topics start out deep in the SERPS, but that’s just the nature of some topics; those that are profitable with a lot of competition. But to go from the top of the results to being buried beyond belief for a keyword no one searches for, pays for, or cares about when it’s your exact match domain name seems to only be explained by the sandbox effect.
While Google won’t admit to the existence of the box, it’s been stated that there may be some things in the algorithm that would appear to give this effect. This means it’s a hands-off process; no humans involved. This is why I’m completely perplexed about this situation. Surely the topic of my past blog posts wouldn’t be considered too spammy. My linking and posting has also been pretty pathetic here. Why? Because blogging about blogging doesn’t pay well. I have more lucrative sites to worry about at the moment. So, what is it about this site would have triggered the algorithm to bury me? It really seems like someone, some spiteful blogger or webmaster perhaps, came along and griped about the site to someone important, a button was pushed, and the site was flushed. I don’t really believe this is what happened, but that’s really what it appears like.
Luckily it hasn’t been deindexed. Deindexing is far worse; this means that Google has just removed all of my pages from their index. Sometimes when people say they’ve been “sandboxed” they mean “deindexed,” and vise versa. They are two very different things. Sandboxing sucks. Deindexing sucks worse.
Supposedly the sandbox effect is only for new sites, and every new site must play in the sandbox. This isn’t true. As for age, this site is quite a bit older than the sites I’ve been building over the past few months, and they’re flourishing. This one, not so much. And every site doesn’t visit the sandbox. I’ve built sites before, and have never been shoved out this bad. I always rank for my site title at least, and within a few weeks traffic trickles in for various terms. I think most people confuse the standard walk up the rankings for new, unauthoritative sites for the “sandbox” but really posts and sites just take time to age and find their footing in Google.
No, this is something different. This is the real sandbox effect going on here. I can’t rank for a pointless term (uberblogger or uber blogger) despite it being the domain name and site title. This is something deliberate, whether it’s caused by human hands, or an algorithm, I don’t know. Nor can I fully grasp why this has occurred because I have no data to support any theory I come up with.
So what do I do now? Some people panic, quit, and abandon their sites when they get sandboxed, or simply leave the site for a while to “wait it out.” This is not what I’m going to do at all. As a matter of fact, I’m going to give this site a little more attention over the next few weeks. I’ll try to build some real domain authority instead of just writing crappy posts and throwing a couple of directory links at it. Slowly, over time (and who knows how much time? Not me), it’ll come out of the Google Sandbox, and when it does, UberBlogger will be bigger and stronger than ever.
