On the other hand, my video blog – http://freshwave.tv/ – started to get promoted, etc. and rised in rank on Google (currently at “5″) within a month of launch. We don’t have that many pages here, though. Not a lot of outgoing links either.

Lesson? There’s not much that we can do about these things. You do what you think is right for your site. And, if you get “sandboxed” in the process, then you just have to weather it out. You can’t possibly “slow down” your new site’s growth just because Google won’t like you.

It’s like telling someone “Don’t do too well in school, or else the teachers/principal/classmates/etc. might not like you. Even if you’re a fast learner, just pretend that you’re not.”

Thing is, they either like you or they don’t.

Google will either “sandbox” you or it won’t.

We should never give anything – or anyone – too much power over our actions.

We may “suffer” a bit if we don’t do things ‘their’ way, but it WILL get better.

I do think forty media’s site would have probably done way better if they waited until they gradually emerged from the sandbox before the publicity blitz, but things like that are hard to manage.

Google was great back in the day, but they have to start thinking smarter in terms of how to bring the RIGHT content and not just LOTS of content to a user.

No point in bringing back hundreds of links when they have nothing to do with what your are trying to do.

Personally, I’d love to see a Google for blog posts ONLY. Now that would be interesting.

If you have millions of readers, are you really going to worry night and day over your PR and whatnot? Word of mouth, readers pointing back to you on their sites, and whatnot can work even better, in my opinion, than Google for getting new people to visit a site.

So I say, let it grow :D

Heat