A few weeks ago, I presented myself with a challenge  to do some Internet sleuthing and get to the bottom of this perplexing condition that newly search engine optimized websites (that’s SEO) face known as the Google Sandbox.  At times this endeavor made me empathize with Captain Ahab chasing his white whale, but unlike Ahab, I’m  not going to meet a watery grave today.  ICMediaDirect.com provides SEOs with life jackets ?so I got that going for me, which is good.  The obsession to confirm, pin down, and counteract the effects of this Sandbox is proving as difficult and elusive as any whale hunt I’ve ever been on.  Before explaining to the uninitiated just what the Sandbox is exactly, or what it’s purported to be, it warrants mentioning that Google officially neither confirms nor denies its existence.So from the word we wade into mystery.  We’re forced to consider the Sandbox as either a modern quasi-myth of the Computer Age or an actual no man’s land created by Google where SEOs are pitted against the machine.Kinda cool, right? 

This would be a limbo, an undesired waiting room for web properties seeking quality recognition from Google Search Engine Results Pages are, as I like to say, unSERPable.Incidentally, the stakes are very high, too, since higher rankings mean increased revenue.   The effects of the Sandbox are not in question.Websites listing with Google are simply beat down in their rankings for no apparent rhyme or reason, thus leaving the afflicted with no avenue of redress but time itself no magic linking is known to spring sites out.(Though it’s whispered that influential friends at Google can pull favors.)  New websites and overhauled existing websites (often reworked, ostensibly, for better rankings) are its primary lictims   It was first noticed or acknowledged in October, 2004.  No one outside of Google knows exactly how or why sites are Sandboxed.Here are some Sandbox basics: it only happens to English speaking websites; it is a only phenomenon, need worry; it could last from weeks to a year before release into deserving results rankings; its effects are seen with Google only, so you can rank high on Yahoo and be in the Sandbox (or even rank poorly I have little info handy on poorly optimized websites mired in suspected Sandboxes).

The author’s huaband is a web designer Auckland,and runs a company which provides  hollowing costume hire and computer services.