Do you suspect that your website is being held captive in Google’s Sandbox but want to know for sure before you take any corrective action? Well, this is not that difficult to check. Bluntly put, if your website is packed with inbound links and supported by proper optimization work, but despite all this, it still struggles at the bottom of the result list, then yes, you definitely have a Sandbox problem on your hands.

If this is the case however, don’t despair, as it’s not the end of the world. Yes, it’s very inconvenient and frustrating to see all that hard optimization work go right down the drain and it may be very painful to witness your website struggling in search engine results, but really now, there is no reason to lose your head over it. In fact, your work was not in vain at all; although for a while your website may occupy an obscure position or even fall down a few steps in Google’s hierarchy, eventually it will escape the grasp of the Sandbox and be right up there where it deserves. In the meantime, you will have to be patient or you might risk making some costly mistakes.

A common slip-up made by website owners soon after realizing their website has fallen victim to the Sandbox is to cling on to black-hat techniques in the desperate attempt of quickly reducing the proportions of the damage. No matter how tempting it may be, this is a big no-no, as it will only add to the negative impact for your website in terms of search engine exposure.

To keep it short, with the way search engines are developed and programmed today, rest assured that any attempt of inflating your website’s exposure artificially is likely to fail right from the start. Search engines, with Google ahead of the platoon, have become very vigilant at spotting attempts of slipping websites in search results through the back door. Rather than risk staining the reputation and credibility that you worked so hard to achieve for your website and face a long list of other consequences, it might be better to suck it up, be patient, and wait for your website to escape the Google Sandbox the clean way. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did.          
  
If sometimes it may be best to do nothing at all and simply let things follow their own course, on other occasions you Can and in fact Should take action to help your website escape Google’s Sandbox grasp sooner. Think of the Sandbox as a filter that impedes the ascension of new websites. The older the website, the less sensible the effects of the filter, and as that particular website ages, (provided it will be properly supported by search engine optimization work further along the way) the Sandbox effect will no longer be a stringent issue. The catch is that it’s not the age of the website per se that makes a difference, it’s the age of the links that really matters.

With this in mind, for your site to make a quick escape out of Google Sandbox, it needs a decent number of quality inbound links that need to “ripen” in order to have an impact. If your site lacks these, it may take many months before it will start climbing up that hierarchy and reach a healthy position, so you may have to take corrective measures in such cases. Even while in the Sandbox, it’s absolutely safe and actually recommended to add links and make adjustments wherever necessary; the only problem is they will only pay off once the website is free. However, no matter what you do, never turn to black-hat practices – chances are these will only sink your site deeper and/or prolong the time it will spend in the Sandbox.