Have you ever heard about the Google sandbox? The Google sandbox is a security step if you will that Google put into place around 2004 to stop spam blogs from ranking well in the search engines with non relevant terms. The Google sandbox was often called a myth and heavy discussions have evolved through this. However, it seems that the Google sandbox is a reality.

One thing that I know, is that my blog is now in the Google sandbox because I made the mistake of registering a brand new domain opposed to buying a pre-registered one at auction.

What most bloggers don’t understand (and I didn’t either until recently) is the fact that pretty much any new domain will end up in the Google sandbox. These are protection steps from Google against spammers and no matter how good your blog is, how much traffic you receive or even how little, you will be reduced to limited search engine positioning through the sandbox.

I believe that the average sandbox playtime for blogs plays out around 3 month up to nearly 18 month for some. What happens during this time is your blog will loose search engine rankings for keywords and eventually disappear.

I’ve always wondered why I managed to hit the first position on Google for a couple of days with a well place blog post in terms of keywords and then suddenly poof it disappeared without trace.

Now I know it is due to the Google sandbox effect and there is nothing I can do until the time comes when the blog will come out of it.

Once you are in the sandbox there isn’t much you can do.

But knowing this, there is one thing you can and that is to buy a pre-existing domain instead.

Hope you don’t get sand boxed!