沙盒效应是Google反垃圾网站的重要措施，出现在2004年3月，那时正好是Google第一次采取严厉的措施，对垃圾网站进行扫荡。虽然有了Google沙盒，但是Google仍然像过去一样迅速收录网站，在互联网这片广阔的大海里吸收新鲜的血液，收录最大的网站，但不是向以前那样任意收录站点了，所有的站长新提交的网站，Google虽然也收录，但是这些网站一般都需要经历测验期的，过了测验期之后你的网站才会被Google重新放回Google排名目录。

According to the theory of the sandbox effect, links which may normally be weighted by Google's ranking algorithm, not least improving the position of a webpage in Google's index, may be subjected to filtering to prevent their having a full impact. Some observations have suggested that two important factors for causing this filter to come into play are the active age of a domain, and the competitiveness of the keywords used in links.