Seniority vs Relevancy in Relation to the Sandbox

Posted by JohnCarcutt
April 27, 2006

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

The marketers in your organization should be made aware of the existence of “The Sandbox”. Sometimes referred to as an “Aging Delay” this is the situation where a new site seems unable to be ranked usually in Google. There is of course a debate, everything is debated in SEO. Some don’t believe it exists at all due to examples of sites who have avoided this issue. Heck, I (knock on wood) am fairly sure this site avoided the issue. But too many sites and examples have been shown where new sites are not being displayed in the SERPs even when they are VERY clean and should be.

My friend Irina of SpiderFriendly has written a very thorough and detailed article on the sandbox called “Google’s Effect on New Domains” and it is a must read.

Recently a company put out a press release claiming that a recent SEO contest “Shatters Google Sandbox Myth”. While I do admire the thought they put into their idea, they forgot one key factor that makes their entire claim invalid; Competition or Relevancy comparisons. The terms they claim shattered the myth were previously not in the index at all and there for had no competition at all. This is a rather large issue and one that many forget when speaking about the sandbox.

I tend to think of the sandbox more in the terms of an “Aging Delay”. Think of it kind of like “Seniority”. A site which has been in the SERPs for a while has seniority over newer “freshman” sites. When a site makes significant changes, they may reset their seniority which could explain why some existing sites fall into the sandbox after major changes. This seniority would not be a stand alone ranking factor however. It would be applied in relation to relevant search terms or “the competition”.

When a search phrase has a history of relevant sites being returned for queries, the sites themselves have built a history within those queries as well. New sites entering that arena may be subject to qualification relative to its keyword peers. In the press release sited above, the terms being searched for had no competition therefore each site was an equal .. there were no “Senior” sites, nothing to measure against. Common thinking is that the more competitive the industry, the longer a site will stay in the sandbox and this fits nice within this theory. Additionally, it is well know that aged domains will perform better in the SERPs … the “Senior” domains.

And a theory is all it is. Why not add one more I say. The engines will not likely give us the true answer to this issue any time soon, but we know that some sites are given Hub or Authoritative status; lets just look at the sandbox as the opposite of that.