I’ve been looking under some SEO rocks and found the neglected sandbox topic. This search was prompted by a question I was asked, along the lines of “will our new site end up in Google’s sandbox?”. With Google sandboxing I’m sceptical- at least about the factors that may cause it, at most that it is a useful term.
Anytime there is a substantial change to a site Google will necessarily re-evaluate that site.
More often than not this does have a negative impact on rankings- as a credibility protection measure for Google, so they don’t continue to maintain rankings for a site that does not deserve them. If the new site has a fundamentally different intention, with content for a different audience then of course it doesn’t deserve to rank the way it used to.
However if the intention of the new site is substantially similar to the old then rankings can recover in a matter of weeks, or sooner- there is no timetable. Some webmasters blame sandboxing for their site dying in the search engine results pages (SERPs) after a re-launch, but the reasons cited are so diverse that it’s hard to find a strong trend or set of factors.
To minimise the effect of rankings drops you should map and 301 relevant pages from the old site to the new, and steadily grow your inbound links with a natural growth pattern- so as not to trigger any flags to Google.
There are nearly always a rankings drop with a new site, and even with an old site that has just been optimised, but the dip is always made up for in the short to medium term.
Related posts:
- Rankings ARE important for Search Engine Optimisation – For Now
- Search Engine Optimisation is not a commodity
- Search Engine Optimisation – Duplicate titles and Meta Descriptions
- Wolfram Alpha – What does it mean for Search Engine Optimisation?
- Matt Cutts on Rank Checking for Search Engine Optimisation
