How do I know if I have been penalized?

[pokeraussie]

It doesn't sound like a penalty at all, just normal fluctuations on G.

[actyper]

Normal fluctuations in google mean you move up/down a spot or 2, not completely out or pages.

Last site I had sandboxed I relied more on just adding content (posting) moreso than adding links. Took a couple months then it suddenly reappeared. This happened last year though so things might have changed.

[imteaz]

i have a sports site, first 2 months i used to get 900 unique per day and making some good money, so what i did is bought a 2k blog comments package, lol after 1 week, Google sandbox my site, now it get only 20 or 30 unique per day.

[Michael Martinez]

Basically what he's saying is get more links.

More trusted links -- particularly trusted links that aren't likely to lose their trusted status.

I would NEVER recommend that anyone buy blog comment or forum profile links. The people selling those types of links complain about their short-lived effectiveness constantly. They are addicts who can't admit they have a problem. They're an SEO nightmare, not an SEO solution.

[jdwanchalk]

It seems that my site was back and ranking as of some time yesterday. I did nothing special to it whatsoever.

[jdwanchalk]

...and it is out again. yay for Google.

[jdwanchalk]

...and it is back in again. Surely there is at least rhyme to this even if it is void of reason.

[GottaTryIt]

I've got one doing this at the moment also and had it happen loads in the past 7 or 8 Months.

Things I've found useful:

1: Removed home page links down to a minimum, no idea if this helped but one of the sites did have a lot of links to internal pages/posts in the sidebars.

2: Got rid of content! That sounds really dumb but after some advice I deleted a lot of my home page where it was basically explaining what the site was about rather than actually giving it to people straight away.

3: Cleaned up the footer, got rid of any footer links and text.

4: Got rid of links from others sites I own pointing to the sandboxed one.

5: As Michael M already said got some trusted links.

That is probably no help but I did that after a site appeared to be sandboxed for Months and it came back strong and stayed.

If you ask on google webmasters forum you get stupid anwers like "why would you rank for that when google can just send players to pokerstars directly" or "your content isn't very good".

One thread there was really good don't know if anyone else has seen it but it contains some really useful advice from some and some dumb shit from othes (mostly good though imo)

-50 penalty for 8+months. I've spent $65k to rebuild from top to bottom. Heavy heavy service. Still not ranking. - Webmaster Central Help

This post I've just written still doesn't really help anyone or me for that matter, as I said at least one of mine is doing it now and after about 8 Months looking for a "real solution" or "real reason" found . . . . F*ck All!!!

[Lech_Walesa]

isn't better solution to build up new site? instead of waiting for the bann to pass?

[imteaz]

I've noticed more people reporting this new Sandbox Effect this year. I'm going to call it Sandbox Effect 3.0 (for my own personal reasons). I think this signals a slight but subtle change in the Google algorithms.

I honestly have no idea beyond that at the moment, but I'll give it some thought and see who else has been thinking this over.

Can you give us some tips, how to get out of it? i have one site which i made about 8 months ago, was ranking top 3 and tons of traffic, but 2 months ago it got sandboxed. i just don't understand how i will get out of it.