Elinor Mills over at CNET blogged today about Google’s method of review period of some new websites and called it that horrendous profanity of the search world, sandboxing.
According to her story, a two separate blogs confirmed this notion, having discussed the matter at length with Google during the SES: San Jose. Mills was unable to discuss the issue with Google herself, as they won’t talk to her or anyone at CNET for the next year, however that’s another story.
Apparently, this is Google’s attempt to filter out the garbage from the good stuff however, Google makes these decisions based on their algorithm and not so much on the merit of the site, “regardless of their merit, or lack thereof, in a probationary category” for several months.
While some see this as merely a unpleasant necessity, many critics see this. She grabbed Rand Fiskin’s blog at SEOMoz.org and he suggested many find this process a pain with Google while Google said it greatly increases their quality.
In any event, when one is at the top of a particular heap, like Google is with search, many will come gunning for them to knock them off for a number of reasons. When this process begins, then companies like Google have to be much more transparent with the way they do things, otherwise the nebulous little complaints become a little more serious.
Fishkin went on to say that all this “sandboxing” is doing is weakening the abilities of websites to get picked by Google. Regardless, Google’s critics will grow for every perceived mistake they might make.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
