Sand BOX

I redesigned site from html to asp. Its well optimized and in top 10 for allinanchor tag for main keyword. Yet my site is not in first 1000 for that keyword.
HTML site was live since 2 years and google scanned all pages. So when i redesign and create asp pages, has google put site in sandbox?

 

I have read up a lot on the sandbox and most theories seem to agree that it applys to new domain names on competative keywords.

Is it possible that Google is unable to spider your new site?

Have you checked the logs for Googlebot activity?

 

One of the Sandbox theories states that the Sandbox has nothing to do with a age of a site, but rather reflects the age of the links to the site. This is theoretically done to defeat temporary linking programs. You would not notice this on a mature site, but it especially applies to new sites.

I still don't know which of the numerous Sandbox theories is on the mark, but if you changed all of your page names (.html to .asp), you have probably lost the link popularity for at least the inner pages of your site. Changing the file extension is the same as changing the file name.

Normally, your site would not be a candidate for the Sandbox, but if there is anything to this theory, it might apply to your situation.

 

The sandbox applies to sites launched since the beginning of 2004. A redesigned site that doesn't rank must be something other than the sandbox. Can other engines pick up your pages?

 

That is a very valid question. Are MSN and Yahoo picking up the pages in your site, and how well is it ranking in those SEs?

 

JonahViaKeyboard, how do you know that or is it just a guess?

I've launched sites all through last year on some competitive keywords, and haven't had problems with any of them. However, the sites I have launched in the past 3 months have simply not appeared in google yet, despite being spidered regularly and having PR. From my own experiences, if the sandbox even exists, I've only noticed it since about Q4 of 2004.

 

Personally I've got two sites that were sandboxed that launched in March and July of 04. What I've read is that the first appearance of the Sandbox was February of 04. Not all sites get placed in the sandbox. Also, if the sites you launched were not on newly registered domains, the sandbox does not apply.

Here's a really good article about the sandbox: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Google-Sandbox-Frequently-Asked-Questions/

 

Is the age of a site based on domain age,or age since Google found a page to spider?

ie. You could own a domain for 2 years but not host a site on it (ie.page not found error), would you consider that to be aged in G eyes, or not because there was no "page/site" to spider?

 

LB, I don't think anyone really knows that for sure yet.

What I would like to know is if anyone has experienced the "rapid rise" through the SERPs after a site comes out of the supposed sandbox.

 

1. My site was online since last 2 years and all pages were having extension .htm
2. Now, i redesigned and all pages are having extension .asp
3. Site has PR4 and all internal pages have PR3
4. allinanchor shows that i am in top10 for some keywords. Yet i am not in top 1000 in google search.
5. Its difficult to find my site for even long keyphrases which are rarely used.
6. MSN is taking homepage only. But Yahoo is taking all pages in root. Yahoo is ranking site well. But not taking internal pages which are in folder. oh yahoo

All my backlinks were on domain name. Does this mean i loosed backlinks?

 

aspcoder,

When you change a page from www.example.com/page.htm to www.example.com/page.asp engines see that page as entirely new. The other symptoms you described in #4-5 are sandbox like, I cannot guess why that would happen.

Are the new asp pages in Google's and MSN's index? search for site:www.yourdomain.com to find out. The number of results returned should be close to the number of pages on your site.

If your backlinks went to your site and not to www.example.com/page.htm then no, you did not lose your backlinks. For backlinks you had to html pages, try to contact people and have them changed to the asp page.

 

Hello Jonah. thanks
1. My backlinks were to www.domain.com. not related to any page.
2. Google has crawled all my pages on 12th of Jan. and i can see using site:www.domain.com
3. MSN is not crawling. and yahoo....oooh just taking pages in root folder.

 

Can't you just use mod_rewrite to make the asp pages appear as the old html? But if the html pages have already been dropped by google, then this won't help.