Finding it difficult or rank a new or in active site despite your best SEO efforts? Google’s Sandbox is a term that’s been floating around the SEO community since 2004. The Google Sandbox is an unofficial concept suggesting that new websites go through a “probation period” during which their ability to rank in Google’s search results is temporarily suppressed regardless of your SEO efforts.
The Google Sandbox can be applied to both new and in-active websites.
Google’s Official Statement on the Sandbox
Google’s search relations team lead, John Mueller has denied the existence of a specific sandbox filter 25:38 in the recording during a Google webmaster hangout. However he acknowledges that their algorithms may need time to understand where new websites fit in relation to the rest of the web.
John Mueller also explained that new websites may find it challenging to rank initially because they have fewer signals, such as backlinks.
Our Own Website’s Data in “Google’s Sandbox”
Now, let’s use our own online marketing agency’s website Threelittlepigs.pro as a case study. Our agency is trying to rank for competitive keywords in Singapore’s digital marketing space such as:
“SEO agency Singapore”
“SEO services Singapore”
“SEO consultant Singapore”
“SEO expert Singapore”
“Digital marketing agency Singapore”
“Lead generation Singapore”
Let’s see how I fared since registering the domain.
Our Domain Age
Our check was on 29th August 2024. Threelittlepigs.pro was registered on: Monday 5th of July 2021. It’s 3 years, 1 months and 24 days or 1151 days old.
Our Site’s Inactivity
The site was registered on 5th July 2021 and was generally inactive until September 2021. I started to build some backlinks using the Skyscraper method and did some guest posts during towards the end of 2021. However life got in the way and I left it inactive till June 2024.
Yes I know, I ain’t a perfect SEO… neither is anyone.
Our Link Building and Content Efforts
I started building links, around 5-10 backlinks a month from June 2024, and started posting content targeted some long tailed local SEO keywords.
Here’s a screen shot of our posting frequency:
Our blog’s content is mostly humanly edited from A.I. outlines. Yes, it is my opinion that A.I. can’t completely replace human writers just yet. However, A.I. is great at brainstorming outlines, and expanding on sections of content that you may run out of creative juice for.
Here’s our backlinks growth and organic positions data:
Our site started being “noticed” by Google, and we got into many of the top 100 rankings on local search engine results.
Social Signals
Our site isn’t really big on social media engagement, and SEO is still a pretty nerdy and niche topic in Singapore Hence forth, there’s not much likes or follows on our social media. It is arguable that social signals may be one of the factors that can help you “escape the sandbox”.
To help with that that, you can run a paid social media engagement campaign on Meta ads. Or you can choose to leave it. I didn’t run any engagement ads.
The Results
Our agency got our first SEO generated lead within two months of starting to publish content and link building. (Read: No, I’m not going to start shouting on social media that you can rank page one in two months)
One of our targeted pages is also ranked on the 4th to 5th page of local SERPs. However, despite continuing to build high quality links and publish content onwards in August 2024 (the 3rd month), there has been no movement on the search results.
That may… be alluded to the Google’s Sandbox.
Tips to Get Out of the Sandbox
- Content Quality
High-quality and unique content is the bare minimum these days for ranking in the SERPs. This is in light of Google’s helpful content updates in recent years. They’ve taken a tougher stance on people’s first, high quality content.
- High Quality Backlinks
Yes, getting high quality backlinks. This signals to Google that your site is trustworthy. Google’s API leak confirms it, alongside other technical SEO and UX factors.
Rand Fishkin from Moz even suggested that relying solely on acquiring lower-quality links, such as those from SEO-specific directories, article submission sites, reciprocal links, dofollow blog comments, and forum signature links, could potentially extend your time in the “sandbox.”
- Technical SEO and UX
Make sure your site is technically optimized for speed, mobile-friendliness and has a clear URL structure. The implement on-page SEO practices like using headings tags, alt texts, and internal links. Ensure that your site is easy to navigate and provides a great user experience, menus, contact us pages, etc.
You can also use Google Search Console to identify potential indexing issues.
Time for SEO to Work
The SEO community generally agrees on average that it takes 4 to 6 months for noticeable improvements in a website’s ranking and traffic. This may correlate to the notion of a “Google sandbox”.
To second this, Ahrefs conducted a study on over 2 million keywords. They found that only 5.7% of newly published pages make it to the top 10 results on Google in one year.
Conclusion
My view is that whilst Google Sandbox remains an unofficial concept, the hypothesis can be viewed as informally valid as many new/ inactive sites experience a delay in ranking.
Whether it is due to Google’s caution with new content or simply a lack of authority signals, the best approach is to focus on people’s first content, quality backlinks and good user experience. You increase your chances of breaking free from any “sandbox effect” and achieving higher visibility in search results.
