The Sandbox Effect is a theory used to explain certain behaviours observed with the Google search engine. The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence. Webmasters have claimed that their site will only show for keywords that are not competitive . It appears this effect does not affect new pages unless the domain is in the sandbox.

There are many different opinions about it, including the view that the Sandbox Effect doesn't actually exist and that the search ranking behaviour can be explained as a result of a mathematical algorithm, instead of a decided policy .

Those who believe the sandbox exists observe that it can sometimes take up to a year or longer for a website to be promoted from the Google sandbox, while those who do not believe in a sandbox explain this duration as simply the time it takes for Google to calculate PageRank using an "eigenpairs interpretation of nodes".

Those who believe in the "sandbox effect" (such as Searchguild.com) consider it a "policies" based approach by Google, whereas some mathematicians believe it is simply an algorithmic effect.

Regardless of interpretation, it is widely accepted that new Websites and Webpages do wait longer for ranking in Google than other search engines .

Testing

Searchguild.com has created a test to determine whether a site is in the sandbox, and to help distinguish suspected Sandbox cases from instances where poor or 'spammy' optimization methods have caused the page's search results to be negatively affected. Critics point out that this "test" assumes that there is, indeed a sandbox, and point out that Searchguild.com does not have any way of identifying a sandbox effect from a "poor" optimization technique, nor do they address the mathematical considerations implicit in a discussion of PageRank and its effect on the sandbox.

Community reaction

Since Google is the dominant search engine on the Internet, this "sandbox effect" has distressed webmasters[attribution who see their websites included in Yahoo! and MSN in a short period of time, but not in Google despite following Google's own guidelines.

It is thought, by some[attribution , that the sandbox is a measure taken by Google to avoid spam websites abusing search engine optimisation techniques to reach the top of the index, getting barred by Google, and then repeating the process using a different domain. Yet another explanation is Google's "supplemental" index.

Google's sandbox appeared to be put in place in March 2004.