Comments on: Bloggers Reporting Changes in Google Traffic Levels – Sandbox Updated?

By: L

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:24:59 +0000

I checked the “site:” feature on Google search, and Google only has 5 of my (Pursed Lips.net) pages listed.

By: L

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 07:07:53 +0000

I think one of my blogs got into the sandbox, too.

Although, I’m not sure about the sandbox thing, either, because one of my blogs just started and is doing really well in Google.

Hey Mike, when I tried Google Sitemaps, most of my pages couldn’t be indexed due to some error. I think this was before I branched onto separate domains, so I might try again.

By: Catherine Lawson

Catherine Lawson — Sat, 20 May 2006 21:55:57 +0000

I don’t know how well they’ve done this filtering. One of my blogs, has just been banned by Google and MSN – I don’t know why. I only found out when I tried to ping at http://www.pingoat.com and got a message to say it had been banned. I checked Google and MSN, and I was no longer listed.

The annoying thing is, it barely had any ads in it at all, as I was using it to drive traffic to one of my sites. It wasn’t one bit spammy. If anyone would be kind enough to look at it and tell me where I went wrong, I would be greatful – it is at http://www.diznology.blogspot.com

Blogger haven’t banned it – just the search engines. I have bought the diznology domain, but I don’t want to move it until I know where I have gone wrong. Thank you.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 20 May 2006 03:31:14 +0000

I’m still waiting at the 2 month mark to be indexed at http://greenr.com while my domain before that took almost 7 months from registration to be indexed. Here’s hoping for a quicker inclusion this time.

By: pcunix

pcunix — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:28:29 +0000

One thing I have noticed is that my posts have been getting page rank more quickly. It used to be almost three months before a new page would have rank, and now it’s about two. It also seems that the pages are being ranked higher: where I used to get many PR3 and 4 pages, most of the new ones seem to automatically be PR5

By: 8a, online marketing blog

8a, online marketing blog — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:03:29 +0000

[...] Even een korte linkdump. ProBlogger schrijft dat er een aantal blogs/sites zijn die aangeven dat het verkeer vanuit Google ineens significant is toegenomen. Zou het te maken hebben met het oplossen van de problemen rond Big Daddy (lees daarover een interessant artikel van Matt Cuts van Google)? Op een aantal van mijn sites zie ik een toename van 15 tot 30%. Zijn er meer mensen die dit hebben ervaren? Lees meer op Problogger. [...]

By: Have You Experienced A Significant Increase in Your Blog Traffic from Google Recently? « Sabahan.com

Thu, 18 May 2006 13:11:51 +0000

[...] Apparently I was not the only one who hase experienced this. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net had received emails from three separate bloggers regarding this issue. He points out to the possibility that the infamous ‘Google Sandbox’ might have been updated. [...]

By: Lipped Media

Lipped Media — Thu, 18 May 2006 04:22:47 +0000

For my newest blog, which is a week old, we were on Google within a few days, on the first page for some keywords, and we get okay traffic from it.

For another, older, blog, suddenly we’re getting GREAT traffic from it (and images and blog search)! It’s our only blog to do so well with Google.

By: Market Participant

Market Participant — Thu, 18 May 2006 03:11:43 +0000

I've been seeing a slight boost in traffic from google searches @ my blog http://gewinnvortrag.blogspot.com/. My guess is that google has implimented some sort of splog (spam blog) filter so that the universe of legit blogs is being given more weight. In the long run, the issue of splogs ruining blog credibility and causing advertisers to sour on Adwords will be a big problem for GOOG. By funneling more traffic to legit sites, google is indirectly increasing the quality of Adwords traffic.

By: Scott Elliott

Scott Elliott — Wed, 17 May 2006 21:53:52 +0000

My blog, which launched last August, saw pageviews pick up in the last week. I first noticed that some very old posts were suddenly appearing in my top 10 most viewed pages of the week. They were posts that did well back then or perhaps used some good keywords (one linked to Kevin Costner’s yearbook picture, for example). My blog’s sort of unusual in that it’s housed at a MSM website. I am one of the most popular blogs on our site, but my traffic is not huge. I don’t know the ins and outs of Google like you all do, but even before reading this post I suspected I had gotten some sort of bump in Goodle search results.

By: Candy Addict

Candy Addict — Wed, 17 May 2006 21:49:08 +0000

I’ve seen an increase in the last week or so – nothing major though. I just attributed it to a natural increase in traffic.

Brian

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Wed, 17 May 2006 20:26:28 +0000

The Sandbox Effect is real and Google has confirmed it (especially through Matt Cutts) on more than one occasion, including in the interview with Mike Grehan linked to above.

One very probable cause for the increase in blog traffic from Google is Matt’s long post on his personal blog yesterday where he basically told people to start looking to the blog community for natural links. He also indicated that Google may now be trusting links embedded in blog articles more than they used to be.

By: gaman

gaman — Wed, 17 May 2006 17:29:31 +0000

Two of my newer blogs which were started in February and April respectively have shown a significant increase in traffic yesterday.

One has recorded its highest level ever, up to 150% increase from the normal level. The other one received 100% more traffic.

I’ve noticed several of the newer posts that use popular keywords were recently just indexed by Google. In addition, the blog that gets 100% more traffic have been getting quite a significant amount of traffic from Technorati for the past few days,

In regard to the sandbox effect, I doubt that it exists. But I agree that something might have happened today/yesterday.

By: A.B. Dada

A.B. Dada — Wed, 17 May 2006 15:21:49 +0000

I’m not sure if I “trust” the sandbox idea. I’ve added a few new sites (completely new domain names) and have done almost zero promotion and the sites get indexed by Google very quickly (less than 2 weeks). One of my sites has NEVER had an inbound link at all except for one blog comment I made on a blog with no traffic at all, and it is starting to get traffic (only about 6-10 visitors a day during the build-out period) and I was very surprised to see it is already gaining ground. Odd.

One of my best income generating sites has existed for less than 30 days and it is already getting traffic with absolutely zero promotion, zero link trade, zero directory listings and zero spamming. I’m completely surprised that it is receiving traffic because I know I never put it out there. I can’t find any inbound links to it either, other than the google referrer. Odd.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:15:41 +0000

Fricking insane hit these past few days. Our traffic’s dropped by about 600 unique visitors per day. I don’t know if our site was down for some extended period of time and was thus uncrawlable, or whether it’s a genuine change in the google algo. We’re still ranked very high on MSN and Yahoo.

By: Semo

Semo — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:14:43 +0000

For more than six month since I started my hardware blog most traffic came from MSN. However, the last week saw a huge boost for Google traffic. Seems you have to wait some time for this to happen if you’re not using google sitemaps…

By: Razib Ahmed

Razib Ahmed — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:04:33 +0000

My blog is just 2 months old and it got indexed by Google within 1 month. For my another blog it took 2 months to get indexed by Google. Now, I am seeing some hits from the search engine. What I feel is that Google searc tools now give more importance to original content than ever before.

By: Arun

Arun — Wed, 17 May 2006 12:18:55 +0000

I have noticed some changes in 2 of the 4 blogs that I write. Interestingly traffic has doubled in one(http://autoblogindia.paintedstork.com/) and gone down to around 70% in the other – http://travel.paintedstork.com/blog. The second blog has fallen many places for some keywords which used to drive the traffic, but at the same timegetting more traffic different keywords. My other 2 blogs don’t seem to have been affected!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 17 May 2006 12:06:07 +0000

I have been doing quite a bit of experiementing with google sitemaps and it definitely does make a difference to getting your site thoroughly indexed if you are having problems.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 17 May 2006 12:00:37 +0000

Because of these effects it really pays to have a range of blog topics, on a range of different topics and on different servers. I am sure they would balance each other out somewhat over a period of time.