Google's
Aging Delay for New Domains
By Scottie Claiborne
You've Got To Pay Your
Dues
Many site owners and
SEOs are worried because their new sites that
rank well in Yahoo and MSN aren't doing well in Google,
and they're
blaming it on the "sandbox." The current theory
is that new sites are
somehow being penalized for obtaining too many links, too
quickly.
Is There a Sandbox?
Is there some sort
of link analysis going on, some sort of threshold
that will get links to new sites discounted? It sounds like
a logical
possibility. However, many of us who don't buy volume links
or
participate in linking networks are seeing the same ranking
delays.
New resource sites
with a few good relevant links are taking just as
long to climb Google's ranks as the instant link pop sites.
I think a
lot of people are confusing the sandbox with an "aging
filter" that
appeared earlier this year.
6 Months for Results
in Google
I haven't seen any
brand-new sites with new domains appear at the top
of the search engine results pages (SERPs) since early in
2004. There
seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I've checked with
many site
owners and SEOs and I haven't found anyone who's gotten
a brand-new
domain ranked well in Google. If there's a magic bullet,
no one's
spilling the beans.
What happens is that,
as new sites get indexed, they appear for some
obscure queries; they may appear at the top for a week or
so, but then
they drop to the bottom of the SERPs for several months.
The page
shows a PageRank in the Google toolbar, as well as backlinks.
Everything else works fine but it just doesn't rank well
for any terms
in Google. Many times not even the company name.
If you have a brand-new
site that isn't ranking well, stop driving
yourself nuts wondering what you are doing wrong! Stop tweaking
and
changing things, trying to influence your rankings; until
the site has
been in the index a while, it doesn't seem to matter what
you do to
it.
Why an Aging Delay?
My own theory is that
the age factor for new sites is Google's answer
to mini-networks and other multi-site strategies intended
to
artificially inflate link popularity. Many people divide
what should
be a single site into multiple sites in order to capitalize
on the
links that are exchanged between them. Others build a series
of small
sites that are only designed to add link popularity to the
main site.
By delaying the ranking
of brand-new sites, the mini-network strategy
becomes more of a long-term strategy than a quick jump to
the top.
Site owners who might have started new sites are going to
be more
inclined to add new content on existing sites in order to
avoid that
delay.
Plan Ahead for New
Sites
If you are launching
new sites for clients, make sure you set the
expectation that it is likely to be 7-8 months before the
site
achieves any real results in Google.
We used to keep a site
under wraps and launch it once it was
"perfect." Now it makes sense to get a few pages
up for your new site
as soon as you complete them. The sooner Google is aware
of the
domain, the better.
As soon as you have
a domain name and have the hosting set up, put up
a temporary page and link to it from another site in Google's
index to
start that clock ticking.
Subdomains May Avoid
the Aging Delay
Pages on subdomains
are generally treated as part of the main domain,
making them a possible workaround. If your client has the
option of
building their site on a subdomain of a site already indexed
instead
of a new top-level domain name, let them know that this
may avoid the
time delay.
Paid Placement
If search engine traffic
is critical to your success, get your site
out there and linked to as early as possible and plan to
run an
AdWords campaign for a few months until the site can be
established in
the editorial results. Yahoo and MSN do not have a delay
built in, so
focus your early optimization efforts on these engines.
Don't worry, Google
will eventually give your new site the respect it
deserves -- just give it time.
Scottie Claiborne
Scottie Claibourne http://www.successful-sites.com/
|
