"Sandbox" for Local Search

[Scott Hearne]

Hello,

I was wondering what the opinion is of a google "sandbox" is for local search?? Does it exist for local? How long does it last?

Also, for organic as well. I think it used to be 6-9 months for organic (at least that's what i heard) Is this still applicable?

for those not familiar with the term "google sandbox" it means a period where google doesn't let newer sites rank highly for a certain time period.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Scott,

I have not heard much talk about the organic sandbox for awhile. I still hang in SEO circles, but not as much. So not sure if it's changed. You just don't hear about it that much any more.

With Local, as you may be aware, there is a delay before you rank. But it's not a sandbox per se. It can take 6 - 8 weeks to fully work into the local database. During that time you can pull listing up with map search for name or phone, but you may not rank for direct KW searches at 1st.

 

[Broland]

Not having enough data to properly categorize and classify a site is basically what people coined as "sandboxed". This has gotten better over the last couple years, as data becomes processed faster.

Part of Google's algorithm's rely on things like historic rankings of the domain and user interaction in the SERPS which there is no data for when a site is new. Kind of similar to how it takes a while to get enough data to analyze for a new site in Analytics and WMT.

As described by Linda - for different reasons because of added local algo factors and added time for factoring those - this is true for Local as well.