Sandbox question

[oceanplanet]

Hey seo guy saw your seochat thread regarding the sandbox effect, I remember you did a test after the florida update and changed all the "seo" on your site to "sem" and then the site went back up.

So here are some questions:

1. Have you tried that method with this sandboxed site that you're talking about in that other thread? If so, what happened? If not, why not? :)

2. You also mentioned an atlanta real estate site further down that thread, is that the site you were referring to in your first post or was that a different one?

3. I was late into that thread, and when I checked your link to Google showing the ranking for the atlanta site it was at #2, and the unfiltered version was at #1. Is that what you mean by the sandbox or was the filtered version way ranked much lower when you first posted the atlanta thing? If so, how did you get it to #2 then?

4. Also a related question when florida hit which position did seo-guy.com fall to?

5. Another one, after you replaced "seo" with "sem" on your site it shot back up to the top, how did you then get all of the "seo" back on the page, without triggering the filter again?

Thanks! :)

[seo guy]

Oceanplanet great questions and welcome to the forum.

#1. Yes I tried this method, what I did was changed the site from "Atlanta Real Estate" to "Georgia Real Estate" and the outcome was nothing.

#2. The atlanta sites are one and the same the domain is www.atlanta-real-estate-homefinder.com

#3. The atlanta site just started ranking on Friday for its terms so it seems the sandbox has been lifted, this is prevalent on many other sites so its not an isolated instance it appears google has lifted or adjusted the filter

#4. When Florida hit SEO-Guy fell to 9999 on the digitalpoing tool for "SEO" after my reset it went back to #11

#5. I did a find a replace and putit all back. MY logic was they tested the filter and applied it to some sites to see how they react, sites that had overoptimization for their kw, once I reset the filter and they were no longer applying it I simply put it back and it ranked again

Any more questions :)

[oceanplanet]

Thanks seo guy for the great answers!

I am still seeing quite a bit of filtering going on with the competitive terms, e.g. a site that is #6 unfiltered, is still #25 filtered.

In other words many sites have moved up the list like you mentioend due to apparent sandbox being lifted, but still not exactly at the same position as unfiltered.

For example your atlanta site is still #2 when it should be #1 as seen in unfiltered. Of course there are also slightly larger gaps with some sites like what I mentioned above.

How should we solve this problem now?

[seo guy]

The operator that removes the filters IMO removes ALL filters not just the sandbox so you may still be being hit by some other filter that lowers your rank, so dont expect non sandbox rankings and non filtered rankings to be the same.

[ShawnWalters]

What kind of filter would that be, overoptimization, underoptization, what do you think. Im kinda in the same boat, as I still see several sites that change rank with the exclusion parameters.

[SPARKO]

I dont think anyone can really answer these questions as yet; the sandbox seems to new for anyone to have much experience of dealing with it. I know my site was circa 600 now my keywords vary from 49 to 300; not that I have done anything to my site to encourage the figures just time. When I use the filtering system I'm number 1 or on the first page for all my search terms.

Tweaking with your site when it's in the sandbox doesnt seem to have any real effect; just the fact that you may over optimise your site for when it is finally out ....

If you wanna know if your in the sandbox, play with your sites kw density put big <h1> headings in etc etc and see what happens to your position it doesnt matter if it isn't pretty just use it as an experiment; now is the time to try !