I have posted about this on a few affiliates forums with to say the least a like warm response. I will say again that during the Google updates in Feb and May 2010 the Google Sandbox effect has been extended. New sites are being hit harder than ever before. I picked up on this after the Feb update as I noticed new sites were in many cases getting no long tail traffic. At last I’m starting to see on some affiliate forums that many with newish sites are posting that they have lost most if not all of their Google traffic. Now I know many will say, sit back, let the dust settle and let’s see how things are in 6 months time. This though is no use to me! If we all just sat back then we all would get nowhere! I wrote a few lines about The New Google Sandbox last week so if you have not read that post read it.
So following on from my previous post I now have 3 news sites. One is ranking superbly, one is just starting to show signs of life in Google plus the third has been launched this week. I have also passed on the methods used to a friend to combat the new Google sandbox effect. So far he is getting very little Google traffic but he simply needs to wait. I believe my second site is the key site. I strongly believe this will rank nicely in Google within a couple of weeks. I believe my friend’s site will also “kick in” within a couple of weeks and rank highly. I’m not going to use the new methods on the third site so I can gauge how long the new sandbox effect takes to be removed naturally.
I must admit I enjoy the challenge of fighting Google’s new algo changes. I have over 70 sites which range from 3 pages to over 300,000 pages, from thin sites to content rich sites and from new sites to sites over 5 years old. Because I have such a wide spread of different sites, I am in a better position than most to understand the effects of new Google updates. I can simply examine the data from my sites before and after the updates to see what has actually occurred. I picked up on the May Day Long Tale algo update within a couple of days although many dismissed any form of algo update.
As affiliates we have to rise to the challenges that Google sets us. There will be many algo updates that will hit us hard for years to come. Those that are prepared for major changes and willing to search out solutions will prosper more than those who simply wait for others to provide solutions.
