The ultimate purpose of the sandbox is to curb the manipulative search engine techniques employed by the webmasters that violate Google's webmaster guidelines. Through sandbox Google upsets the worthless spam sites to fail in early traffic building and to harness the buying of expired domain names that enjoyed good pagerank to give a springboard effect on the new site and to dampen the value of incoming links to expired domains.

Google is exceedingly careful not to entertain the spam sites. As spammers get discouraged if they fail to rank well in the first few months and they close down their spam site.

Sandbox is also a serious measure against those sites that couldn't careless about employing the Google's webmaster guidelines.

Sandbox effect confuses many of the amateur SEO executives because the amateur sees his pagerank soaring high in Google and Yahoo! but plummeting down in terms of Google. Their ignorance even informs them that they are not indexed in Google for some serious reason while others reach the pessimistic conclusion that they have triggered the Google penalty and that they have become a banned site.

Google appreciates natural link building over time and hence sandbox effect discourages purchased link building.

There is also a remote possibility when your site does not show up and that it is not suffering the sandbox effect as well, rather just that your links are being monitored. The Google algorithm may be analyzing the nature of your links, their age, their source website, all hosting Internet providers, and other aberrations connected to the links if there should be any. Whatever be the reason the effect is all the same the website's pagerank suffers greatly.

The first reaction of website owners on their site entering the sandbox is to panic. The sandbox does not call for fear rather it calls for patience because sandbox is not a penalty from Google it is just a dampener. However it can be a frustrating period especially if your site had enjoyed the initial glory of magnificent pagerank gained out of Google's bonus points.

Positive thinking is well in place in this situation, think how you can use this time to enhance your site in all possible ways that would promote visitor conversion rate. Try to use this time to make your content extensive. It will be of help in the long run as Google always has a special eye for content that will help you rank high. One of the lethal mistakes too costly to be redeemed from would be to give up on content while your site is in the sandbox. This calls for caution not to run into any hasty conclusions before you make sure that your site is just suffering the sandbox effect. Because, if you wrongly assume that your site is penalized you will not make any positive steps to enhance your site which will them become a self-fulfilling prophecy by losing your site to the vast abyss never to be retrieved to good position.

Utilize this time to gather more incoming links, venture into link exchange campaign if you have already not. Identify those sites that are most relevant to your site's theme. Linking to quality sites will help you in achieving your long-term vision of achieving the authority site status.

Since you have lot of time left before your site gets out of the sandbox effect, present your site to all possible worthwhile Internet directories, not to mention the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) as they serve to be good source one way links. All these preparations will pay rich dividends when your site is liberated from the sandbox effect. You would have wasted your precious time, if you do not take the above efforts to enhance your site while your site is in the sandbox. Then you would suffer double disadvantage.

Widen your scope on other marketing strategies and promotional ideas of increasing and maintaining your website traffic levels. Entertain both online and offline promotional techniques that will boost your visitor traffic.

There is no way you can change what has happened and that it is inevitable that for the next three to four months you have to endure the sandbox effect, all that you have got in your hands is time - utilize all you've got to lessen the damage caused to your online and offline business.

One way of avoiding too long a stay in the sandbox is to have a virtual launch of your site. You can buy a domain and park it allowing to run some of Google's sandbox time. You can get ready with the content for your site while having the parked site in the sandbox.

Put your site live at least three months in advance to your real launch to while away the sand time. Time your launch carefully, you certainly will not like to be filtered out during the Christmas holiday shopping season it would hurt you too much especially if you are a retailer. There is nothing much more important than a careful planning of your site's launch date.

Sandbox effect attacks almost every new website. It is a dampening device used by Google to achieve certain control over the new sites. During this period the sites suffering sandbox effect will not rank well irrespective of their excellence in optimization.

As sandbox effect is inevitable, the webmaster should anticipate it and take measures that will lessen the damage. One of the ways of lessening the damage created is to run a virtual launch and allow the sand time to be endured by a dummy site. Secondly your real launch time is to be carefully planned not to be trapped during the most lucrative season's of your business year.

The time in sand should be utilized to enhance your website in all possible ways - including adding more content, including additional links, making submissions to Internet directories and expanding the horizon on promotional and marketing strategies.

Little thought and planning will help you triumph the sandbox tragedy - the sandbox is a reality - but it can be a reality that can be used to boost your site.