"Sandbox" dangers?

**randomo** · 06-09-2011, 06:33 AM

Hi SEO guys,

I was putting together a one-page site that I could forward many of my domains to, basically just saying "This domain is for sale - contact me here."

Morgan Linton described setting up a similar site in his blog a couple of days ago. But a reader commented that "with the recent changes at Google, domains being redirected like this are now getting in Google’s sandbox. I would NOT recommend it for either your own domains or even suggesting it to others. We are now going back to individual pages set up for each domain."

I know very little about SEO & the "sandbox". Should I avoid setting up a page & forwarding my domains to it? Would that result in my domains getting put into the sandbox, which would decrease their value to prospective buyers?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

**south** · 06-09-2011, 07:06 AM

Funny, I did exactly that last weekend, and pointed about 1k domains to it. I'm not really concerned about the sandbox, as long as they don't ban them from using adsense in the future.

I did it for a few reasons.

1: Parking is simply not worth the pennies it pays now.
2: The last 5-10 sites I built (on domains that I had at parked), when checking the httpd logs, showed so much crappy traffic that I was worried about leaving them at parked much longer fearing they would be delisted/banned/blacklisted, similar to what happened with whypark domains.
3: Obviously, maybe I can sell some more domains with a clear message that the domain is available to purchase.

**randomo** · 06-09-2011, 09:13 AM

OK, thanks for the advice. I have gone ahead & forwarded most of my domains to a for-sale page. (Morgan's contains a mini-form where a buyer can enter their offer for the domain, but I was afraid that may scare some potential buyers off, so mine just has a declaration that the domain is for sale and an email link to get more info.)

**south** · 06-09-2011, 09:32 AM

That was more a random thought than advice

Google will do what google will do.

Not sure I would put an email link for the spambots to grab. I also put a form up on mine, and just created a new email address for everything to go to in order to avoid all the spam going to any of my main email addresses, so I can do a mass delete as needed.

Also, I didn't read how he did his, but I did not do a dns redirect on mine. I put a new server online for this, and created new dns records for each domain pointing to the new server with a catchall php script so no matter which domain you go to it displays each name in the title and page. I did the same for 404's, to catch all the click.php???? crap, and have a "home page" link from the 404.

**randomo** · 06-09-2011, 09:54 AM

When I made the forwarded page in XSite Pro, I used a masking process that's supposed to keep bots from reading my email address. Hope it works.

Someday I'll learn how to use things like php - I like the sound of your page that shows each domain's name. The best I could do was a frame redirect, so at least the domain they typed in still appears in the address bar.

**kokoperry** · 06-10-2011, 11:29 AM

Here are my thoughts regarding this, but I don't know if what I'm saying is accurate. Would love for someone more experienced to chime in:

I certainly understand setting up individual landing pages for domains you acquire via private sale. But if you acquire a domain name on the drop, the PR and value of links currently pointing to a domain will be wiped clean anyway, so what's the harm in redirecting? When you eventually sell the domain, your client is going to have to start from scratch in terms of the sandbox. The only benefit of the inbound links is traffic (http://searchengineland.com/do-links...h-google-17811)

The major flaw I could see in redirecting is not knowing where your traffic is coming from. But if you redirect to a custom built URL through Google custom URL builder and add a hash tag at the beginning (and change your Analytics code to allow the tracking of a hash tag), you will know from what domain the traffic is coming from

Then, if you optimize the landing page slightly by including commonly searched for terms (domain for sale, URL for sale etc.) and include the domains you have available for sale, the landing page will still be indexed and you will still get that search traffic.

Of course, it's entirely possible I'm missing something major here. I'm new to the domaining part of things, but have been developing large, online brands/businesses for the last few years, so I'm quite capable on the SEO and development side of the coin.

Interested in reading others thoughts...

**kokoperry** · 06-10-2011, 03:41 PM

I really wish some experienced people will come and chime in here...

**Seraphim** · 06-10-2011, 03:51 PM

If you're worried about Google's sandbox then don't allow them to index the page/website via: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Or if you want the one page/website indexed then do a 404 redirect per alternative domain via your .htaccess file. I've done that with 15+ domains redirected to one site/domain and never had any ranking penalties as a result (took about 3 minutes).

Google is pretty good with redirects and so forth, however badly they do suck at other stuff via this new Panda update (like determining the original author of content, etc.).

**Acro** · 06-10-2011, 03:54 PM

I did this for a full 3 years before I joined sedo. That cost me several thousand dollars in parking revenue, despite the sales I achieved through this method. The fact is, if someone wants to buy a domain they will check out the WHOIS info and contact you. Losing PPC revenue is not an option, even if it's gotten lower in the past couple of years.

**kokoperry** · 06-10-2011, 03:59 PM

Thanks, Seraphim and Acro.

I personally am not concerned about the Sandbox. Logically, it stands to reason that the site will be thrown into the sandbox whenever it's dropped anyway and rankings would disappear (if there were any to begin with)...

Once you sell the domain, the new owner would have to deal with the Sandbox anyway, unless they are rebranding their entire business around this new domain and 301ing their old site into the new domain.

I guess the situation would only change if you're buying the domain from a user before a drop.