Search Engine Forums, SEO Forum

Dear all,

I have the following web-site http://www.thehotel.gr/ , which is ranking well in yahoo for keywords such as "villas crete", "apartments crete", "hotels chania" but not in Google. Does anyone has any idea why this may happen?

Thank you in advance for your help,
Emmanuel

Google is generally harder to rank in than Yahoo and MSN.

You may be in the Sandbox or experiencing aging delay, it may have something to do with your site design or you may just be in a competitive industry.

If your site is newer, within the past 6 months, or if you recently started a links campaign I would guess it had something to do with the Sandbox.

If your site is older than that, it may have something to do with your sites "spiderability" and design/navigation functionality.

Try using Google site-maps and building more relevant links!

Google works on link popularity - I think Yahoo is also going down this road too, to increase your presence in Google obtain relevant backlinks to your site.

Google doesn't exclusvely rely on link popularity, but it is an important element.
My site JUST came out of the sandbox today. It's been 10 1/2 months. My link popularity sucks. Totally unpopular. But, I got top rankings for many non-competitive keywords. Maybe now that people can find my page, my link popularity will increase. Long-term, the link popularity is just as important as keeping your content fresh.
Scott

Hi,

Is there some way you can tell if your site is in the sandbox? Is there a default time period a site is sandboxed? I just went live in January.

Thanks,

Brian

Hi,
There really isn't a way of telling if your site is in the sandbox. Although, some people have used the http://www.seomoz.org sandbox tool. It's not very accurate, but it's something.
The only way I could tell is by monitoring my incoming visits. No one was coming from Google. I'd do a search for some of my keywords daily and check the first 10 pages of results. Now, ever one of my pages shows, but up until now, nothing would show... including non-competitive keywords.
As for how long aging delay takes, well, no one knows. Most people say 5-6 months. But, at almost a year, it took me quite a bit longer.
Scott

Thanks Scott. I'm ok with it taking some time, but 10 mos. is a bit too long. Oh well, msn likes me....hehe.

Hi,
10 months IS too long.
Anyway, once Yahoo picks you up, traffic ought to double. MSN doesn't drive a lot of traffic. Although, it does update quickly.
SCott

Yahoo is slightly easy while getting ranking.

While google is slightly hard. Google considers quality backlinks, updated content for giving PR. If sitemap is added in your site then it helps in improved spidering.

If your site is new, then there are chances of entering your site in sandbox.

So for high ranking in google, get more quality backlinks & update content regularely.

While in the Google Sandbox, work on optimizing your ranking in the other search engines.