Comments on: Is Google Overrated? Danny Sullivan Fights Another Battle.

By: Adam Jusko

Adam Jusko — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:25:45 +0000

The sandbox is one in which you have to agree to disagree I guess. Sites with big promotional budgets or new sites from well-known owners that can garner a lot of links in a short time may be indexed faster, but that doesn’t negate the fact that many sites have to wait a long time even if they have quality content or offer a legitimate product/service. You can use examples to justify either position I suppose, but the “sandbox” wouldn’t be so well known if there wasn’t something to it.

By: Mark Barrera

Mark Barrera — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:17:24 +0000

I must disagree with Adam and Donna on the sandbox issue. I don’t want to start a sandbox debate, but I think it is known that sites that are promoted properly don’t have to worry about a sandbox. I have worked with many new site launches that ranked well in google within the first 3 months so I think that saying it will be a year before Google gives rankings is far fetched. It all depends on how you market the site and create buzz.

By: Adam Jusko

Adam Jusko — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:04:18 +0000

Pretty good debate. Danny Sullivan probably wins overall, but Donna Bogatin makes a good point about the sandboxing. Is Google really fulfilling its mission if new sites are nonexistent for a year in its index. Not every new site is a spammer, but Google forces new sites to gain a reputation outside of Google before getting rankings—which is often a Catch 22 for sites that don’t have “connections” with other Webmasters or are in competitive industries in which other Web sites do not want to give any link power to others.