WebProNews » Sandbox

Latest Version of WordPress Released

Neville Hobson — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:52:24 +0000

The latest version of the WordPress blogging platform was released late yesterday.

New version 2.3 offers a wide range of enhancements and new features, including:

Tagging

Automatic notification of updated plugins

Automatic notification when new WP versions are released

Much better management of posts and draft posts

Improvements to the built-in text editor

Automatic site addressing (if your address has ‘www’ in it or not, WP will let people find your site)

A number of technical changes such as additional SQL database tables, multiple category widgets, better support for languages other than English and full support for Atom 1.0

See the full list here.

The new feature that most people will probably be the most interested in is tagging. Simply put, tagging lets you add free-form labels to your posts so you can classify your content more flexibly than only by using more rigid categories.

Dougal Campbell has a good explanation of the differences between categories and tags. Also see Lorelle Van Fossen’s explanation.

I plan to upgrade to 2.3, first on my sandbox before here on the main blog. One reason for doing it this way is to be sure that all my plugins will work with the new version.

If you’re thinking about upgrading, be sure to review the upgrade guidelines from WordPress first. Then follow the upgrade instructions to the letter.

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Google Patent Defines The Sandbox

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:02:47 +0000

If there were any doubt new sites may be spending some time alone on part of the playground, a recent Google patent application seems to define a place where new documents go in their index.

Google Patent Defines The Sandbox

The existence of a sandbox at Google has been a debated topic among webmasters and SEOs. Some arguments have taken place over whether or not content gets sandboxed for a period of time before they can be ranked in Google.

Arguments over the sandbox abated after last year’s PubCon. Google search evangelist Adam Lasnik dismissed the notion that the sandbox exists:

He went on to say that the search engine results page depends on the niche and if it is content rich, and that sites that maintain this are not placed in a “sandbox” in which they are unable to rank.

However, SEO News Blog has been looking at a Google patent application that was recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Matt Cutts picked an opportune time to take a vacation, as his name leads the inventors of it.

SEO News Blog picked out a couple of pieces of the patent as they relate to Document Inception Date. Those pieces indicate Google is giving new content a time out to play with the buckets and shovels in the sandbox before letting that content play with others in the index. We looked at this and have added emphasis to a couple of points:

[0040] Search engine 125 may use the inception date of a document for scoring of the document. For example, it may be assumed that a document with a fairly recent inception date will not have a significant number of links from other documents (i.e., back links). For existing link-based scoring techniques that score based on the number of links to/from a document, this recent document may be scored lower than an older document that has a larger number of links (e.g., back links). When the inception date of the documents are considered, however, the scores of the documents may be modified (either positively or negatively) based on the documents’ inception dates.

[0041] Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by search engine 125 than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter. While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.

If a new document shows up in Google’s index, and arrives with a lot of backlinks in place, it means one of two things: the document reflects some topical event and has attracted links based on this, or it is the result of someone’s attempt to spam the index.

Google can likely tell the difference, which would spur someone like Lasnik to say there is no sandbox, becuase functionally there isn’t one. But SEOs who only see the effect, especially if it persists for a site over time, are going to claim otherwise.

301 Redirects Resolve in 2 Weeks in Google

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:30:34 +0000

A thread over in the Google Webmaster Groups talks about the Google Sandbox, and about 301 redirects. In this thread, Adam Lasnik jumps in and sets some expectations on the handling of 301 redirects, and also does some myth breaking. Here is what Adam has to say:

1) There’s no universal/intentional sandbox. But, as Matt has noted and MRG has quoted (hey, that kinda rhymes), there are algorithms which have a sandbox-like effect on some sites.

2) 301s pass PR and related signals appropriately. Usually takes a couple of weeks for things to smooth out, though.

Most advanced SEOs abandoned the notion of the sandbox a long time ago, and now focus on the process of building trust in their sites (or getting into the trust box).

But confirmation from Google on the speed at which they handle 301s is new (to me at least). This confirms what we have seen in our own experience.

About 15 months ago we took a site with about 20,000 pages and we moved every single URL on the domain, except the home page. It was a massive move, and potentially a very costly one, as the site drove most of its revenue from organic traffic from Google.

The site made the move within 2 to 3 weeks. In that timeframe, the URLs Google was showing in their index had all updated to the new URLs, and the rankings of the pages were completely in line with the rankings of the pages prior to the move. This was great stuff.

However, as I noted in the Google Groups thread above, a massive move like the one we made does come with risks. I would not do it unless you really, really, really need to.

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Latest WordPress Bugfixes

Neville Hobson — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:21:54 +0000

If you upgraded to or installed the new WordPress version 2.1 that was released last month, you’ll be interested in a major bugfix released today:

[…] Version 2.1.1 includes about 30 bug fixes, mostly minor things around encoding, XML-RPC, the object cache, and HTML code. It’s available for immediate download on our download page.

Not only that, WordPress has released a security patch for version 2.0.7 to upgrade it to version 2.0.9:

Version 2.0.9 only includes the security update, which was around the code we use to prevent XSS. […] As a reminder, we’ve committed to proving security updates to 2.0 through 2010, but all new features and development are going into the newer branch, which is at this time 2.1.

An easy way to upgrade either version is to install just the changed files. Ajay D’Souza makes it easy. I expect Paul Woodhouse will have an interest in this

I haven’t yet made the jump to 2.1 on this blog (but I did on my sandbox) as I’m still dithering about the K2 theme. There’s also the issue for me re Dreamhost and PHP. Although this blog hasn’t fallen over so far, I really must find time soon to upgrade.

Related post:

Should you upgrade to WordPress 2.1?

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Cache Date – New Google PageRank

Aaron Wall — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:31:09 +0000

Given Google’s reliance on core domain authority and displaying outdated PageRank scores, cache date is a much better measure of the authority of a particular page or site than PageRank is.

What Google frequently visits (and spends significant resources to keep updated) is what they consider important.

If a site can throw up a bunch of new pages and see them in the index right away that is a much better indication of trust than just the raw PageRank score. Plus the site can recoup its costs much faster than a site stuck in the crawling sandbox.

This is especially important consideration if you are in a news related field, as sites that are quickly indexed rank for the new ideas while they are spreading, and enjoy many self reinforcing links due to automated content and the laziness of journalists, bloggers, and other webmasters.

Jim Boykin has a free tool to check the cache date of a page or site. It will also show how recently other pages linked to from that page have been cached.

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Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

Google Sandbox Playing Favorites?

J. Scott Harris — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:20:31 +0000

I don’t write as much as I used to or would like too. Web development takes up most my time these days.

My awesome and most humble boss takes care of most the editorial duties around here. Yet that is what inspired me to sit down and write this very article.

My boss, Jeff Phillips, has been doing some blogging on the company website concerning SEO tactics and practices we see a great deal of people overlook. We build quite a few sites and do pretty well in the search engines, but we also understand true SEO is a bunch of leg work and even more patience. That doesn’t mean we can’t advise others how to get off on the right foot and have a solid search engine friendly foundation. That has been the theme of his writing.

Back in my WebProNews days, I can remember when the Google Sandbox theory broke. Then, it went from being theory to a provable fact. Finally it just was something that site owners came to accept and plan around. As I started with C.A.D. Website Design, I can remember advising new clients that their site, worst case scenario, might not show up in Google for up to six months after we launch it. Google’s sandbox had become just part of the web development environment. Then my boss started blogging.

We don’t run our blog through Blogger. We don’t use any of the main tributaries into Google to post our articles. We don’t dump an RSS feed to Google News. We didn’t even start to ‘tag’ anything till yesterday, 12.06.06. We simply host our own PHP based blog (WordPress) on our own server. So when Jeff posted SEO Best Practices When Designing Your Website Part 2 we expected to sit on our site for a brief time before we saw it in the Google index. However, a few hours later, in came a Google Alert letting us know that very post has just been indexed. Not long after that another alert came in to notify us that a link to the article had been indexed.

How could this be? We run a program we developed called RSStatic. Basically, it will take RSS feeds and generate static pages using each item and description from a feed. Sometimes these pages would take months to get indexed. Google loves RSStatic pages, but the sandbox effect was still in play with them. I’ve known for years that Google has a heart-pounding love for blogs, but this was unprecedented.

I’ve watched over the past year as our sandbox time slowly decreased. However, I couldn’t have expected it to become non-existent. So why then, are we seeing a sandbox of hours and not days, weeks or months? It’s simple really. Have you ever heard the saying “It takes money to make money”? Google is a capitalistic search engine so with them it should be changed to “It takes rank to get rank”. We’ve seen this for years.

Some people these days like to claim PageRank is for entertainment purposes only. My guess is they say that because they don’t have any. PR plays a big part in who we link to and who we want linking to us. Any web master will tell you the same. No one wants to throw away their PR on some newbie fresh onto the scene. Conversely, those same newbies are fighting over those scraps from the well-ranked, established sites. Rank begets rank.

At first I thought it was multiple factors that led to the reduction of our sandbox. I though it was a mixture of site age, established links and an established, spam free host. But through deduction I realized our site has a lot of new incoming links. RSStatic is used on a bunch of sites and each page it creates has a link back to CADWebsiteDesign.com. I also remembered that we have recently switched host from Datapipe to Rackspace. So unless Google takes into account who the host is and not how long the site has been hosted there, that factor is null as well. That leaves us with it simply being an established site.

CADWebsiteDesign.com has been around a long time and the whole time it has been owned by a single entity (Jeff and his wife, Lucinda, are very close). Not only that but it has ranked well since I’ve worked here. I’ve seen it go from being ranked #16 for a tough term, website design, to our peak at #4. Currently we rank anywhere from 4 to 8 depending on which datacenter you hit. As I’ve seen us climb, I’ve see our sandbox dwindle. So is Google giving “props” to its favorite sites? Is it bending the rules for those who been around awhile and haven’t gotten kicked out of the club? Does it take rank to earn rank? I think it’s hard to disagree.

Google’s sandbox used to be look upon as a penalty for being a new site. We might consider re-thinking that and looking at it as compliment for being established and remaining atop the rankings. It’s like becoming a partner at a law firm. Once you’ve not only paid your dues, but done the labor to work your way up, you are granted certain privileges that the interns are left envying

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Scott Harris a former graphic designer for iEntry and currently the design manager for C.A.D. Website Design and RSStatic

There Is No Google Sandbox

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:01:33 +0000

No less an authority on search engine optimization than Shari Thurow has claimed the fabled Google Sandbox, a holding pen for sites new to the index, does not exist.

If there were a Sandbox, would so many spammy sites make it on to Google’s search result pages?

That is an argument that can be made in favor of Thurow’s comments as noted on the SEOmoz blog in a recent post:

There is no such thing as a Google Sandbox. It’s one of those terms
that self-proclaimed search engine “experts” came up with to explain why their methodologies don’t work.

Michael Martinez, who posted Thurow’s comments as they appeared on LED Digest, agrees with Thurow and Mike Grehan that the Sandbox per se does not exist:

I don’t believe that Google intentionally sandboxes all new Web sites. I do believe that Google has admitted, more than once now, that there is an unexpected effect that they sort of like and have no desire to alter.

The effect requires you to work harder.

Maybe there is not a Google Sandbox, but a mirage of a Sandbox viewed by those whose optimized sites linger in Google limbo instead.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Does Google Use Whois for Sandbox?

Andy Beal — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:12:45 +0000

SEW looks at whether Google might be using Whois information when determining the legitimacy of a particular web site.

This would certainly give fuel to those who believe Google “sandboxes” newer domain names.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Yahoo News Tests Trackbacks, Enhancements

Steve Rubel — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:23:39 +0000

Yahoo News is gearing up to implement trackbacks.

When I blogged this last story using ecto, it automatically discovered this trackback URL. More details can be found on the Yahoo News Sandbox blog. In addition, they are also rolling out new personalization and keyword highlighting features. You can demo all the new goodies on this Yahoo News! Sandbox site.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

TrustRank + Sandbox = TrustBox??

Rob Sullivan — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:12:26 +0000

There seems to be a new term emerging around the whole sandbox/trustrank issue. In this article I look at that new term and discuss it’s implications in the SEO field.

The new term is “Trustbox” and I think it quite neatly summarizes the effect we’re seeing on Google now.

When I first read Stuntdubl’s take on the Sandbox I was intrigued.

You see, I’ve never been a fan of the whole sandbox theory – that new sites are arbitrarily assigned to this Google neverland for some pre-determined period of time.

In fact, for quite a while Google wasn’t even aware of its existence (at least according to them). In fact, they found out after some heated discussions on well known forums that there was indeed some sort of dampening factor affecting some sites.

So I did some more digging around on the whole issue of Trustbox – what it was and what it means.

The first mention I could find of Trustbox happened on November 18th. That’s where the author asked if the Sandbox would be more appropriately named the Trustbox.

This is because, as more people dug into the sandbox (pardon the pun) they began to realize that it wasn’t really a neverland that affected all sites.

In fact, most sites were treated differently based on a bunch of factors.

Ultimately, it seems to come down to trust. That is, is a site trustworthy enough to have earned its way out of the “sandbox” and into the regular organic listings.

And then there was the followup by Stuntdubl on how “Time + Trust = High Quality Indications for relevance.”

And I have to tell you, based on what I’ve seen in the past few months I have to agree. As I said I don’t believe in the sandbox, but I do believe in the trustbox.

So how does one get out of the “Trustbox”?

As the name implies, you need to be a trusted source of relevant information before your site can be unleashed into the regular index.

But since it’s so difficult to determine relevance on a site by site basis, Google needs to look at offsite factors to determine if your site is trustworthy.

How it does that is by looking at the incoming links you’ve managed to build since entering this space. And you can’t just have any only links. They must be from trusted sources. You want people to link to you that are considered worthy already by Google.

In my previous article about trustrank and the sandbox I talked about some of the things your site should do to get out.

Things such as ensuring your site is always growing. Not only does this help promote internal link inheritance it also shows Google that your site is a meaningful venture. One that intends to stick around.

As for links you do want relevant, authority sites linking to you. And more then just a couple links. While a link from DMOZ and Yahoo! Will help, they aren’t the only links you need.

Try and get links from other related sites in the industry. For example, if your site sells pet beds turn to other pet related sites to get links.

You see, all Google has really done is closed a few loopholes in the algorithms. They are trying to take what they say in the webmaster guidelines of their FAQ section and apply them to the index.

Therefore, as long as you stick to these guidelines you will be ok.

One more thing that hasn’t been mentioned, but I also believe that while you can earn your way out of the Trustbox, you can also earn your way back in. That means, if you do what you are supposed to to get out, but then turn to spam techniques to promote yourself, you’ll just as quickly earn a one way ticket back into the Trustbox. And if you do that it will probably take much more to earn your way back out.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.