About 2 months ago, this blog abruptly lost all of its good search results. Words and phrases that had been on the first page of Google results were suddenly no where to be found in the top 100 pages. Some would say that The Red Stapler Chronicles was simply “put to play” in Google’s sandbox. The sandbox theory states that new domains (this one started in early June 2008) have to wait to get premium search results. Others might say that this blog might have suffered some kind of penalty for linking to a bad neighborhood or having too many affiliate links.
We will never know who was correct as Google does not share it’s rationalization with anyone. For the record, mark me down as believing that someone at Google has a sense of humor and decided to get me out of the sandbox after reading my rhyming google reconsideration request. Regardless, I can now start to consider visitors from search engines while designing my posts and placing my ads. My to do list just grew exponentially, but so did my enthusiasm level.
Today I also decided to ditch my Widget Bucks Ads from my sidebar. They produced less than a dollar and were causing my blog to load slower. Even though I did manage to sell one Performancing Ad, I removed the ads from my right sidebar. For now, I will keep a block of ads on my left sidebar. In addition, I am now #93 in the 45n5 Top 100 Money Making Blogs. I am floored and humbled that I was able to reach this position on the list. However, I am going to stop obsessing about each update of the list and focus on some of my other goals.
Kevin I had the same thing happen for my site Credit Card Forum and even though they have since bumped up the PR to 3, I am still being punished for something (even though I haven’t done anything wrong) because my search engine results have disappeared. I submitted a reconsideration request too but never heard back. Did they respond to yours?
@Sam–Google does not respond to any requests. I probably sent them a total of eight reconsideration requests. Is your domain relatively new?
Glad you got your mojo back.
Google’s inner workings are definitely mysterious. On the one hand, the ambiguity is frustrating. On the other hand, not having the exact answers allows those who take their SEO seriously to do the work–as you have done– to figure out what works best instead of EVERYONE doing the same thing w/out putting in the effort.
Never a dull moment, at least!
Google in their infinite wisdom did the same to us.
I’m not sure but I think they have a PageRank update every quarter, we must have incurred some kind of penalty and I certainly have no idea why?
Love the blog keep up the good work.
James
My site also sandboxed by google search engine. My site is new. Anyone know what is the average sandbox period for a new site?
A website could stay burried in Google Sandbox even for a whole year.
The period largely depends on the webmaster’s effort’s to build a consistent back link portfolio that will enable Google to appoint the website with increased trust, thus improving its ranking power. Sorry, but there are no specific deadlines on this
Joining the discussion above…
Penalities behind the Sandbox can vary from paid links to rapid increases in back link volume and even large volumes of content being published on a short period of time all done in an unconsistent manner.
Thanks for sharing, Kevin!
Cheers,
Cristian