Google's sandbox is a relatively new filter that appeared to be put in place back in March of 2004. This happened after the widely publicized updates of Austin and Florida, and the implementation of what is known as the Austin update. If you are not sure what those are, there is no need to worry as those updates are now for the most part in the past. The sandbox filter seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on an initial "probation" status. The effect of this is that new websites may get into Google's SERP's (search engine results pages) relatively quickly and may even perform well for a couple of weeks. When the filter is applied to the new website it is referred to as being put in the "sandbox". The new website will still show in the result pages, but it will not rank well regardless of how much original, well optimized content and regardless of how many quality inbound links the site may have. The filter restrains new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages.

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Your choice of text color is really hard to read.

That said, yes, I do believe there is a Google sandbox, but it just got a name in 2004 - was around before that. That's when people first realized one of the things that se's looked for was site longevity - therefore they called it a sandbox for the new sites.

That said, if a new site has better information, etc than those that have been around a long time, it will quickly jump from the sandbox to the main results. However, if you're in a very competitive field, it might take quite a bit longer. And either way - the longer you are around, with that good content, the better off you'll be. Isn't that how things work in the world also? We call it experience :)

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Beth
A Child's Palace - Pinata Palace - Moxie Enterprises

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