What is the sandbox?The Google sandbox is a theory that has been bandied about by frustrated SEO’s and new website owners since 2004. It would appear that some newly registered domains go into a holding area and never achieve any good Google results until a certain period of 6 months or more has expired. This could be a way for Google to filter out sites that only exist to make a quick buck before disappearing again. Google has to protect it’s users as much as it can.

So how do I avoid the Google sandbox?

Well, you can’t. Not if your site is on a new domain and you seem to be at the end of the listings. You’ll just have to apply standard SEO to it, then leave it alone. Nothing more you can do will bring you to the top of the SERP’s.

Don’t employ an SEO if your site is already optimised and contains good information. There is nothing they can do either - trust me, SEO is my business. It’s just a waiting game. 6 months to a year in my experience.

Register your domain and get a site on it ASAP. Then submit it. Even if you are just planning your business, get a site live, and the sandbox timer will start ticking away. While you are planning the rest of your business you are getting closer every day to achieving your google rankings.

If you already have a domain that you’ve used in the past and you think it might be applicable to your business, use it. Chances are it’s already out of the sandbox and ready to start gaining listings in Google.

Don’t base everything on Google. Use other online marketing, Yahoo, MSN, Adwords and Overture. Offline marketing, mailshots, customer emails etc all help prop up your business and ensure that your customers keep coming in if you find one search engine drops your listings in the future. It only makes sense to do all this anyway.