Posts: 8,445
Name: Steven Bradley
Location: Boulder, Colorado
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Shannon you'll see lots of different opinions on what the 'sandbox' is and isn't so there's going to be a lot of misinformation out there.
Google has added a lot of trust based filters into its algorithm and so it's harder for newer domains to rank for a specific keyphrase than it will be for an older domain to rank for that same keyphrase.
Just like riverlee I have a new domain created back in September. The domain has a single page on it and I think all of one, maybe two links pointing to it from my blog. It was indexed in a matter of days as my blog gets spidered fairly often. It's also now showing a PR of 2 in the toolbar after the most recent update. It's now 4 months old.
Just about every page that has been indexed will rank for something. Take a unique phrase or sentence on any page and search for it with quotes around the phrase and it will most likely rank #1 for the unique phrase. It may not, but it should.
If you took the same phrase on put it on the page of a site that has been around for a few years the older domain will probably rank above the newer domain as soon as the page is indexed.
To me the 'sandbox' is more about trust than age though age does go into the calculation of trust.
If you look at the terms that the PR0 site is ranking well for they probably aren't very competitive keyphrases, though if your site has built up trust and authority quickly you can probably rank for more competitive phrases sooner.
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