Playing in google's sandbox and the impact of your Page Rank

The SEO crowd often bleet on about the 'Google sandbox' effect for new or restored websites, but what does it actually mean for your website? And, once you're outside Google's playpen what are the effects of the page ranks?

Well let's get down to some stats first from Google's Webmaster tools:

Description	Page Rank	Impressions (per month)
Website 1	3	65,500
Website 2	2	49,300
Website 3	1	26,100
Website 4	0	14,800
Website 6 In Sandbox	0	2,400
Website 7 In Sandbox	0	1,600

All of these websites are virtually identical. They all target almost the same keywords, they're based on the same platform, use virtually identical data and have the same backlink profiles.

Except Website 6 & 7.
Website 7 is a new site only a couple of months old which targets keywords that are similar to the rest of the websites but it's using a new domain. Website 6 is an old domain which was pointing at an empty directory for a couple of years and has recently been restored but appears to have landed itself back in the sandbox for a while.

So What is Google's Sandbox?

Well no one outside of Google knows to be honest and publicly they have acknowledged that their is some kind of sandbox effect but claim its not a designed in feature.
Either way it is there and even sites which have never had any SEO work done to them eventually exit the sandbox and its traffic climbs up.

How do you get out?
You can just wait but the best thing you can do is keep working on your site. After 3-4 months you may find the number of impressions in Google's webmaster tools start to rise and your traffic starts to trickle in, however sometimes it can take up to 6 months.