Warmest Greetings,

Let's Drive Our Trucks in Google's SandBox!  

:: Friday, January 14, 2005 ::

I may be a girl, but I loved trucks in sandboxes. And making roads, castles that fell apart (because okay, it's better at the beach), and hunting for Barbie, and army men who became buried in the sand. (Not that I liked Barbie or anything...)

So, everytime I hear about Google, and the "Sandbox effect", I have the oddest urge to pull out my sons' trucks and figure out where the pails and shovels got to.

My friend, Scottie Claiborne,, wrote a fantastic, sensible, easy to understand article in Jill Whalen's latest issue of HighRankings Advisor Newsletter, for anyone wondering what the Sandbox thingy is all about, called Google's Aging Delay for New Domains.

If you've launched a new web site lately, with a new domain, and wonder why Google is ignoring it, Scottie writes the best article I've seen that will put your mind at ease, while also explaining the whole situation.

She writes, "I haven't seen any brand-new sites with new domains appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) since early in 2004. There seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I've checked with many site
owners and SEOs and I haven't found anyone who's gotten a brand-new domain ranked well in Google."

I can vouch for this. My new UsabilityEffect.com web site was launched in April 2004, and though crawled to death and nicely indexed, is nowhere to be found in rank or SERPS unless you have the secret code.

That's a Darned Good Question!

At Cre8asiteForums, two threads are popping up some great answers to two not-often-asked questions.

See Examples of sites using right-hand menus?

"I've read what usability studies I can find on the topic of menu placement and have a pretty good idea of the pros and cons on right-hand placement versus left-hand placement. I still don't always automatically use one or the other, but choose depending on the needs of the users, the company, etc. So I'm not looking to be convinced one way or 'tother about the goodness or badness of right-hand menus. What I'm hoping though is that y'all have some examples of sites using right-hand menus. Sites using left-hand menus are a dime a dozen..."

Next, Do You Notify Web Owners When You Find An Error?

The answers are interesting.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 1/14/2005 05:48:32 PM

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