What is Google Sandbox in SEO and Google Domain Age

Google Sandbox 2.0 and Aged Domain Search Engine Optimization Tips

Google Sandbox

As children, we all played in the sandbox, but there’s another little known virtual sandbox floating around in Cyberspace that many just aren’t aware of. Google’s sandbox, also referred to as the Sandbox Effect, is a method for filtering search results that decrease the impact of any link building, content creation and other SEO efforts that are implemented for new domain names.

This results in the degradation of SERP rankings for any given keyword having high competition on an un-aged domain name. You may be thinking that this is an unfair practice implemented by the search engine giant, however, many years ago, spammers would dominate the search ranking pages by buying up multiple varying domain names, duplicating content and creating link bombs with those keywords to the sites, rocketing them to the top quickly and easily. This has been very well documented in the past. To prevent this, and for other reasons, Google has created its Sandbox.

While the Sandbox Effect is something that has been well documented in the SEO world, Google has never abjectly disclosed it or the exact set of rules that pertain to it. This is because the Sandbox has been put in place to prevent spammers and low quality content generators from dominating Google’s ranking pages as they once did in the past, so it’s pretty clear that Google most likely never will disclose all the details related to its rules.

You may have a domain name that you have been trying fiercely to rank on the first page of Google’s search engine results, to your frustration, but have not been able to get it to budge after months of work possibly including content creation and heavy link building campaigns. In this instance, be aware that if the domain name is a new domain name, then your efforts are mostly going to waste. While there are special situations that may be exceptions to the Sandbox rule (such as obtaining a domain name with the exact phrase as your primary keyword), in most cases a new domain name will rank significantly lower then an aged domain.

Understanding what an aged domain name is and following along with some basic principles that are in effect when attempting to acquire an aged domain, is imperative to the success of your intended SEO campaign. Not referring to the date of initial registration of the domain itself (located in the WHOIS database), an aged domain refers to the first time that Google indexed its pages.

If a domain name was first registered in 2006 but it wasn’t first indexed until 2012, the domain name isn’t aged. However, if the domain was registered in 2006 and first indexed in 2006, then you have a well-aged domain name. This information is vital to the success of your SEO campaign, but finding the right aged domain name may be difficult so it will take some effort of consistently searching.

One other important issue to note here while discussing aged domain names and their acquisition is that you should not attempt to acquire an aged domain name that was in a completely different category or niche then the site that you intend to associate with it. The content should be somewhat similar to what you’re attempting to rank for. For example, if you’re trying to launch a children’s toy ecommerce site, don’t try to purchase a domain name that was indexed for skin care a few years back.

Although this isn’t a major issue today, repurposing a domain name may become a red flag in the future, especially if you attempt to associate entirely different content with the domain then its historical indexes contained. Try to keep the niche or category somewhat similar to what it used to be in order to avoid any potential future headaches.

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About Kamran

Kamran Khursheed, Founder and Author of GoogleWebTech, He specializes in on-page, off-page SEO, inbound marketing and link-based content marketing with a five-year track record of driving qualified leads and traffic to websites. Now he is a full-time blogger who loves to explore blogging. He has a passion for helping newcomer bloggers make their blog noticeable and money making.

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