SMarT Marketing

You may have heard about the Google “Sandbox” while surfing the web for internet marketing, seo, sem, or other related terms.  Although this is a heavily debated topic I will throw my understanding into the ring.

Google doesn’t trust new sites.  This means they don’t want to show sites in their search engine results (at least not for high demand terms) that:

1) Just registered their domains….brand new sites

2) Have had no links from other sites pointed to them

There is no rule about how long Google “punishes” a site for being new but it is related to how quickly your site gains links and who these links are from.  For instance, if you launched a new site last week and immediately received links from CNN.com and HowStuffWorks.com (very trusted sites) your website may completely by pass the “sandbox”.  If you launched your site 5 years ago but still have no links to it, it may still be viewed as untrustworthy by Google.

So what are Google Supplemental results? 

Think of it this way.  Google runs two indexes; one for trusted sites that have back links and / or have been around for a while and one index for newer sites and / or ones that have very few links.  They normally try and use the main index for results.  If you search for “internet marketing firm” it is unlikely you will see any supplemental results, since there are many sites that are trusted that are relevant for this search.  However if you search for “internet marketing firm in Orlando who manages pay per click accounts” you may see supplemental results if there are not enough relevant results within the main index.  You will know they are supplemental because under the listing in green it will say  Supplemental Result after the URL.

Is the Google Sandbox the same as the Supplemental Results?

I think so.  And even if there are differences, the fix is the same.  More links and more time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.