The Google Sandbox

After nearly a month, I am now sure Google is actually indexing www.photographybyjet.com

I was having doubts that Google was able to index www.photographybyjet.com my first site till yesterday.

There is talk about a Google Sandbox

This means that Google kinda ignores brand new websites for a period of time. This is to keep spam sites from getting indexed quickly. It also means that unless you have a site that already is well ranked linking to a new site, it will take some time for Google to note it's existence.

For weeks, there was not sign that Google had indexed the site

At the Google sitemap page, Google had words listed as common words on the index page that were not used anywhere in the site. I am sure that they were from GoDaddy's parking page, which was up for quite a long time before I put any content up. It was frustrating. I could see the Googlebot was going through the site, but nothing was showing up in Google.

In fact, for nearly a month, only the home page showed up at all

None of the other pages showed up. The site is now about 20-25 pages.

Finally, I see signs that the site is getting indexed by Google

The list of common words now is made up of words actually used in the home page. I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with the page. Now all the common words are relevant to the page. The main keywords I wanted the page about are listed in them.

Also, is seems like other pages on the site are now getting indexed

There are now 5-6 pages from the site indexed. It does seem like the pages that are getting indexed are a bit older on the site. I made an html sitemap for visitors to use (not the xml sitemap for the bots). It is still not indexed. The sitemap was one of the last pages I created on the site.