SEO penalty or Google sandbox? Advice needed.

[eaton2003]

Apologies, I should have known that a long post can sometimes be a conversation killer!!

In relation to the Sandbox do you have any thoughts on the following:

1. Do you accept that there is a sandbox and hope that one day you suddenly come out of it and rank for your major keywords.

or

2. Do you accept that the sanbox no longer exists, was something that may have been around in 2005 but which has been superseded by filters. Until you manually fix the problem you will suppressed in the SERPS indefinitely?

I say there is a sandbox as sometimes when you do sudden changes or influx of links you drop out of the top 200, and then weeks later appear in a better position. What explains going from position 20 for example to position 200 and then to position 5.

[ziy1978]

I say there is a sandbox as sometimes when you do sudden changes or influx of links you drop out of the top 200, and then weeks later appear in a better position. What explains going from position 20 for example to position 200 and then to position 5.

must not forget that the sandbox applies to young sites