Not Showing up in Google: Sandbox or Delisted?

It's one of the great puzzles of the Age of Findability: is your site listed in the major search engines or not? And if you can't find your site in the search engine is it simply because the search robot hasn't made it to your domain or for a much worse reason? What's worse than not being on the search engine yet, you ask? Being in the search engine then getting kicked out, a process known as "delisting". If you are in the search engine but aren't showing up for specific topical searches, you might well be in the Google "sandbox".

When a reader asked about why his site isn't showing up in Google, even though he's been building it out for months, a little bit of detective work and some educated guesses reveals something that he might not want to hear:

    Google Sandbox or Delisted Completely?

This is one very good reason why it's important to play by the rules...