Google Sandbox Mode Demythified - Revisited.

This posting is a little off topic since it doesn't directly cover ecommerce. I wanted to provide some additional information and feedback on the results since publishing my first article at WebProNews.

Since writing the original Google Sandbox mode article for WebProNews I have spent a lot of time monitoring the results. One of the first things to happen was my article actually mentioned Everything eCommerce more than my own website. The result: I knocked myself off of the number one spot for the keyword phrase.

Whether the site is number 1 or 100 for "everything ecommerce" really doesn't matter. I only used that keyword phrase as something that I could easily check against to find out if my site was successfully listed. During the last two weeks Google has also been updating their indexes which led to some weird situations where my site would be listed, then not, then listed again depending on the data center.

My Google Adwords have been steadily bringing in revenue, almost enough now to buy a Venti Chai Latte from Starbucks. This income is offset by the cost of my AdSense ad campaign. So far I have spent $1.35 on traffic and made $2.78 from advertising. Since my hosting on this account is free, this site is actually profitable.

To further test my theory that using a Google Adwords program is one way around the sandbox mode, I have setup two additional blogs. These blogs Search Engine Guru and Long Tail Marketing were indexed again within 4 hours as part of Google's need to deliver targeted advertising. I have also manually submitted these sites to the most popular search engines.

My Site on Long Tail Marketing is #1 for the search terms long tail marketing on Yahoo!. It actually displaces Chris Anderson's website. Chris Anderson is the Wired editor who coined the term. I was impressed with how rapidly Yahoo's search tool is indexing sites. These were done using the free url submission tool, and not the paid directory inclusion.

The growth of traffic to my website has been explosive and is much higher than I initially anticipated. Because of this, I will be devoting more time and effort to provide quality content and more frequent updates. If you have an ecommerce related question or have a topic that you would like to see covered on Everything Ecommerce, drop me a line.

Here is a copy of the original article featured on WebProNews.com on December 29th.

Google Sandbox Mode Demythified
Joshua Wood
Contributing Writer 2004-12-29

I have spent a lot of time reading search engine tricks and techniques. During this time one thing that kept reappearing is the idea of a sandbox mode. I wanted to experiment with driving traffic to a few sites through expert links so I decided to create a blog. I chose Google's Blogger tool hoping that somehow it would give me a boost to Google rankings or a higher PR from that link.

Google Sandbox Mode Demythified

I set up my blog Everything Ecommerce on December 17th. After setting up the site I then went around and submitted it to the major search engines, and began commenting on other blogs in order to increase the number of inbound links. I also noticed on the Blogger account tools a link to have ads by Google on your site. After completing the registration processes my site was approved for the Google ads in only 1 hour. That was something that really caught my eye. I had previously submitted sites that I wanted to run Google's ads on and the approval process took much longer.

Next I setup the Google Adwords code on my site and began seeing public service announcement ads. I expected this since Google's documentation stated that these ads are shown until GoogleBot is able to index the site and present relevant ads. In just a few hours of time from adding my first post my site began to show advertisements based on the content of my site.

I was stunned to have targeted ads showing up so soon so I did a search in the Google Tool bar for "everything ecommerce" without the quotes. My site came up #2 out of 1,840,000! Not too bad for a day's worth of work and no real site optimization, just relevant content related to my site title and address. Within 2 weeks from the site going live the site is now #1 for searches on everything ecommerce. I doubted that I will receive any traffic from such a bizarre key word phrase, but I used it to just test if my site was indexed or not.

This little experiment has taught me a couple of interesting things.

1. If there is a sandbox it can be circumvented by the use of google adwords on the site.

2. Content is king. Well written content optimized for your target audience will deliver search results. I try to stress this to my clients, it was nice to see it working in practice.

3. Google still loves blogs. With their continually updated content and relevant long tail text, they are a great resource for bringing targeted traffic to your site.

4. Traffic comes from the strangest places. Looking at my referrers, I found 6 entries for google searches of Everything Britney Spears.

This is just the start of what I hope to accomplish with my blog. Over the next few months I will be actively trying to enhance it's PR and incoming links. I hope that this will then raise the commercial sites that I am really trying to promote. Whatever the results, I'll be sure to keep you updated.