Brian McDowell and the Sandbox Theory
First let me explain the sandbox theory. The sandbox effect is said to exist for new websites to discourage spam farms and short term link builders from being a valid result from search queries. That being said, it is often argued that it is better to buy an existing domain to build on then to develop a web from a new domain. I decided to put this to the test and develop 2 pages to rank for the term Brian McDowell.
Site 1
URL: http://www.GrubbDawg.com/
AGE: December 01, 2001
DESCRIPTION: The site has the phrase Brian McDowell on the home page one time. Brian McDowell is used as anchor text and links to Brian McDowell’s Linked-in profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdowell. This page has a PR of 0 and no incoming links (0 according to Google. 52 according to Yahoo). The site was not optimized for the term in any way. The terms Brian and McDowell did not appear in the meta information at the time of the test (or ever in the history of the site). The GrubbDawg home page fails W3C validation with 8 errors.
Site 2
URL: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdowell
AGE: June 04, 2003
DESCRIPTION: The site has the term Brian McDowell on the page 5 times. Brian is used 12 times, McDowell is used 5 and McDowell’s is used 6 times. This site has a PR of 0 and has 0 incoming links from Google. The only link it has from Yahoo are from the GrubbDawg domain which you would assume would pass authority to this page. The Brian McDowell Linked-In profile fails W3C validation with 68 errors. The Term Brian McDowell appears in the meta title and the meta description.
I chose to test the sandbox theory on the name Brian McDowell since it is a non-competitive key phrase and top positioning should take little effort. Once I put the link in place, I sat back and waited for the infamous caching. Keep in mind that GrubbDawg was initially built with a flash entry page and was a test site since creation outside of the eyes of the search engines. This is the first time there was any relation for the term Brian McDowell.
The results? My search query on Google for the term Brian McDowell turned up both pages in the top 10 (positions 6 and 7 to be exact) in a matter of 2 weeks. During that time, no effort was put in to optimize either site for Brian McDowell or any other term. Both pages were untouched.
What now? Well obviously I created this writeup on optimizing for Brian McDowell so let’s see how long it takes to surpass the homepage. I also purchased a brand new domain to bring into the game. Stay tuned as my next writeup will be about Brian McDowell playing in the sandbox.
