The Axandra newsletter archive - 22 February 2005 |
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking a look at Google's sandbox and what you can do to get out of it. In the news: Google releases a controversial new toolbar, The New York Times buys About.com and more. Table of contents: |
1. Facts of the week: How to get out of Google's sandbox |
If your web site has good rankings on Yahoo, MSN and other search engines but not on Google, it's likely that your web site has been put into Google's sandbox.
What is Google's sandbox? In general, brand-new web sites with new domain names need about 6 - 8 months to get top rankings on Google. The usual process is that Google indexes the new web site, lists it for some less important queries and then the web pages drop from the search engine result pages for several months. Although other search engines work fine, Google doesn't list the web site, sometimes not even for the company name. If you have a brand-new web site, don't worry about this behavior. You are not doing anything wrong. Google seems to delay the inclusion of new web sites. This phenomenon is called the Google sandbox. Why does Google delay the inclusion of brand-new web sites? It seems that Google delays the inclusion of brand-new web sites to encourage webmasters to build content instead of building mini-networks. Many webmasters try to artificially inflate the link popularity of their web site by creating a network of small web sites with different URLs that all link to each other. Many of these web sites have no purpose other than linking to the main web site. By delaying the ranking of new web sites, this mini-network strategy doesn't offer a quick jump to the top anymore. The delay might encourage webmasters to focus on the content of their main web site instead of building useless mini sites. What can you do to get out of the sandbox? If you have a new web site, expect that your web site will be listed within 6-8 months in Google. Add content to your web site, get good incoming links and make sure that your web pages are optimized for Google. As soon as you have a domain name, create a temporary page and link to it from another web site to make Google aware of your web site. The 6-8 months delay seem to start with Google's first contact with your web site. The sooner Google knows about your web site, the sooner it will be listed. By the way, Yahoo and MSN don't have such a delay so don't focus on Google alone but also optimize your web pages for these search engines. Can you speed up the whole process? It seems that there's nothing that can be done to speed up the sandbox process. Some webmasters in online forums suggested that it might help to get inbound links that point to different web pages of your web site, not just to your index page. It might also help if your web site has its own IP address and it also seems to help if you have a link from the Yahoo directory. However, these theories haven't been confirmed yet. Google's sandbox is Google's attempt to prevent spammers from creating web sites that are just a flash in the pan. Google wants to return high quality web sites with good content in its result pages. If you haven't done it yet, take a look at last week's article which discusses Google's focus on latent semantic indexing in its latest search engine algorithm. |
2. Search engine news of the week |
Google has released a beta version of its new toolbar Google has released a beta version of its new toolbar. The new version offers a feature that automatically inserts links to Google and other major web sites on web pages, thus changing the content and driving traffic to other web sites. The new feature has been created by the same person who created Microsoft's controversial SmartTag feature. "The New York Times Co. said Thursday that it was buying the About.com Web site from Primedia for $410 million in cash."
Yahoo! Local Germany allows web surfers to find companies, persons and institutions. It is a cooperation with the telephone directory provider DasOertliche.de.
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3. Articles of the week |
Google under fire over autolinking "Comparisons with Microsoft's long-dead and much-maligned 'Smart Tags' technology have cast a shadow over Google's latest toolbar. [...] web pages with street addresses suddenly sprout links to Google's map service by default. Book publishers' ISBN numbers trigger links to Amazon.com, potentially luring shoppers away from competing book sellers. Vehicle ID licences spawn links to Carfax.com [...].
"As for the results, they were often more than adequate. [...] And, as I realized during the course of my fast, my Google fixation meant I was ignoring wide swaths of the vast world of Web searching."
"Jean-Noel Jeanneney, who heads France's national library and is a noted historian, says Google's choice of works is likely to favour Anglo-Saxon ideas and the English language."
"Microsoft promised Internet Explorer 7.0 will plug cracks in security. But there's a bigger hole in its search strategy, some say." |
4. Recommended resources |
"IBP is much better." "IBP is a good software program. It's great that you regularly update the search engine database. I've been using [competitor] until I discovered your software. I think that IBP is much better than [competitor]. Thank you very much."
"ARELIS is absolutely outstanding! Must have taken years to program. You people included everything that is needed. Very happy with it."
If your AdWords pay per click campaigns don't return a positive return on investment (ROI) or if you're paying too much for your PPC ads, take a look at our new Google AdWords eBook. Find out how to lower your advertising costs while increasing your profit.
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5. From the developer's kitchen: The next IBP version - part 7 |
This week, we continue our series about new features in the upcoming new IBP version. Even more features and many improvements for your web site success The new IBP version will have many more features and it will have many improvements over the current version. No other web site promotion tools offers as many features as the next IBP version.
If you send an IBP Business report to your clients, they cannot find out that IBP did all the work for you. Get the new version for free! Of course, the new IBP version will also offer improvements in the Search Engine Submitter, the Ranking Checker and much more. The next IBP version will be a free update to all current IBP users. It will be released in the this quarter. If you buy IBP now, you'll get the new version with many more features for free. |
6. Previous articles |