Google’s Aging Delay for New Sites

By Scottie Claiborne (c) 2005

You’ve Got To Pay Your Dues

Many site owners and SEOs are worried because their new sites
that rank well in Yahoo and MSN, aren’t doing well in Google, and
they’re blaming it on the “sandbox.” The current theory is that
new sites are somehow being penalized for obtaining too many
links, too quickly.

Is There a Sandbox?

Is there some sort of link analysis going on; some sort of
threshold that will get links to new sites discounted? It sounds
like a logical possibility. However, many of us who don’t buy
volume links or participate in linking networks are seeing the
same ranking delays. New resource sites with a few good relevant
links are taking just as long to climb Google’s ranks as the
instant link pop sites. I think a lot of people are confusing the
sandbox, with an “aging filter” that appeared earlier this year.

6 Months For Results in Google

I haven’t seen any brand new sites with new domains appear at the
top of the search engine results pages (SERP) since early in
2004. There seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I’ve checked
with many site owners and SEOs and I haven’t found anyone who’s
gotten a brand new domain ranked well in Google. If there’s a
magic bullet, no one’s spilling the beans.

What happens is new sites get indexed, they appear for some
obscure queries and they may appear at the top for a week or so,
but then they drop to the bottom of the SERP for several months.
The page shows a PageRank in the Google toolbar, as well as
backlinks. Everything else works fine but it just doesn’t rank
well for any terms in Google. Many times, not even the company
name.

If you have a brand new site, stop driving yourself nuts
wondering what you are doing wrong! Stop tweaking and changing
things, trying to influence your rankings; until the site has
been in the index a while, it doesn’t seem to matter what you do
to it.

Why an Aging Delay?

My own theory is that the age factor for new sites is Google’s
answer to mini-networks and other multi-site strategies intended
to artificially inflate link popularity. Many people divide what
should be a single site into multiple sites in order to
capitalize on the links that are exchanged between them. Others
build a series of small sites that are only designed to add link
popularity to the main site.

By delaying the ranking of brand new sites, the mini-network
strategy becomes more of a long-term strategy than a quick jump
to the top. Site owners who might have started new sites are
going to be more inclined to build new pages on existing sites in
order to avoid that delay.

Plan Ahead for New Sites

If you are launching new sites for clients, make sure you set the
expectation that it is likely to be 7-8 months before the site
achieves any real results in Google.

We used to keep a site under wraps and launch it once it was
“perfect.” Now it makes sense to get a few pages up for your new
site as soon as you complete them. The sooner Google is aware of
the domain, the better.

As soon as you have a domain name, get the hosting set up, put up
a temporary page and link to it from another site in Google’s
index to start that clock ticking.

Subdomains May Avoid the Aging Delay

Pages on subdomains are generally treated as part of the main
domain, making them a possible workaround. If your client has the
option of building their site on a subdomain instead of a new
top-level domain name, let them know that this may avoid the time
delay.

MSN, Yahoo, and AdWords

When launching a new site, if traffic from Google is critical to
your plan for success you need to plan ahead. Get the site out
there and linked to as early as possible and plan to run an
AdWords and/or Overture campaign for a few months until the site
can be established in the editorial results. Yahoo and MSN do not
have this delay built in, so focus your early efforts on these
engines.

Don’t worry, Google will eventually give your new site the
respect it deserves — just give it time.

Scottie Claiborne is the Web Marketing Strategist for
The Karcher
Group and the facilitator of the
Successful Sites Newsletter.
She is a speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and the
High Rankings Seminars as well as the administrator of the High
Rankings Forum. This article originally published in the
High Rankings
Advisor.