Does the Google "sandbox" exist?

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves a lot of guesswork, even from professionals who specialize in the field. That's because the search engine companies — Google, Yahoo and MSN being the big ones — tend to keep mum about how their algorithms work other than in a general sense, both for competitive reasons and to try and keep spammers at bay. One of the guesses that's been made is the existence of a Google sandbox.

Computer programmers use the term "sandbox" in reference to a means of controlling an application. In the same way that a parent places a child in a sandbox to contain the child and the child's activities, a sandbox restricts an application from interfering with other applications or accessing sensitive areas of a system.

The "Google sandbox" therefore refers to a way of keeping sites from interfering with search results of existing sites. The theory is that new sites get placed in the sandbox when they are first indexed by Google. These sandboxed sites either do not rank at all or do not rank highly in any search results returned by Google. At some point, however, they are let out of the sandbox and suddenly all their pages appear in Google's index and those pages can rank much more highly in the search results.

This was all speculation based on behaviors that SEO consultants were seeing with new sites. However, Google representatives like Matt Cutts have stated in public that no sandbox exists, that what people have been seeing are side effects of specific filters that are charged with keeping spammy or otherwise dubious sites out of the search results.

And of course, recent SEO contests like redscowl bluesingsky (see "Redscowl Bluesingsky" or "Redscowl-Bluesingsky"? have shown that a general Google sandbox does not exist. (For more details, see Contest Shatters Myth of Google Sandbox.)

So the Google sandbox doesn't exist. But there are specific filters that are out to trap "bad" sites. New site owners must be wary about these filters and make their best efforts to avoid behaviors (such as the wholesale exchange of links) that trigger these filters and keep their sites out of the Google index.