The dreaded 4 month sandbox

[Holly]

Admins, I am sorry but I did not know where to put this? There is no general forum. (also need a help forum for questions about the board unless I missed it?)

Has anyone experienced the "sandbox" This being at about 4 months your site just goes through the floor. No clicks, hardly any traffic etc... I think I am in that now. I hear it lasts only a week or so. I am not eve sure what makes this happen. Anyone have any opinions on this?

[Llamalord]

Few questions:

1. How many inbound links do you have
2. Whats your PR
3. Do you know if your site has been punished or something
4. Is your site classed as a link farm? How many outbound links do you have

[oaklvr]

Here is what I find on the Sandbox Effect - It is just a fancy word for "you have to wait until google finds you and decides your site has good content.

The Sandbox Effect is a theory used to explain certain behaviours observed with the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] (holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence. Webmasters have claimed that their site will only show for keywords that are not competitive. It appears this effect does not affect new pages unless the domain is in the sandbox.
There are many different opinions about it, including the view that the Sandbox Effect doesn't actually exist and that the search ranking behaviour can be explained as a result of a mathematical algorithm, rather than a decided policy.
Those who believe the sandbox exists observe that it can sometimes take up to a year or longer for a website to be promoted from the Google sandbox, while those who do not believe in a sandbox explain this duration as simply the time it takes for Google to calculate PageRank using an "eigenpairs interpretation of nodes".
Those who believe in the "sandbox effect" (such as Searchguild.com) consider it a "policies" based approach by Google, whereas some mathematicians believe it is simply an algorithmic effect.
Regardless of interpretation, it is widely accepted that new Websites and Webpages do wait longer for ranking in Google than other search engine.

Connie