The days have passed where a domain name could be purchased, many thousand back links purchased and a few months down the line, the website is flying high with an incredible page rank and great traffic statistics. But unfortunately, website optimisation is not that simple or straightforward any more.

Since the spring of 2004, domain marketing procedures have significantly changed. Webmasters have been finding it more and more difficult to quickly rank in search engines within a few months of domain purchase, which in essence is to drive traffic to the desired site(s).

Google’s method (or so we think) of reducing the ranking of newly created sites is what is know as “sandboxing”. As I have mentioned in a number of posts previously (I’m starting to sound like a broken record), this is due to the fact that google’s algorithms are confidential and all details mentioned are of course what we web developers, webmaster and SEO experts “think” are going on.

This sandbox is a procedure that would hinders new sites from growing too quickly. It could be though as a filter that is applied to new websites, which would make links and content not count wholly. While a site is in the sandbox, ranking points will not be assigned and consequently becomes extremely difficult to rank at all for any terms or phrases relating to the site.

Even though google will actually index a new site days after it have been made active, it is this sandboxing method that allows google to control the influx of new websites into their search engines. If new websites would be quickly and easily accessible in search engines within weeks of commencing, spammers using under hand SEO techniques, know as Black Hat Techniques (e.g. paid linking schemes) would be having a field day. Using such techniques violates google’s (and probably other search engines) terms and conditions, which will result in a domain being banned. The sandbox process will put off a large percentage of these spammers due to the face of the waiting period before any rewards.

The length of the sandbox probation period all depends on what keywords or phrases your website is targeting. For example, a site competing for an extremely competitive keyword may remain in the sandbox for longer that a site trying to rank for a less competitive term.

However, on a positive not, anyone looking to create a half decent website, im sure will be more than willing to wait a few months for the sites popularity to begin to grow. My tip of the day would be to purchase multiple domains in advance of launching websites, this will allow the domain to age, and you guest it reduce its time in google’s sandbox.