Over at Link Building Blog, Andy Hagans talks about the “index issue” he had with Google and tries to explain how he solved it. He recently launched a new site that had a “2003ish PR5 domain” he acquired hoping that the sandbox effect will not affect him. However, even if the site had more than 200 pages two weeks after he launched it, Google had only cached the homepage.

Apparently, it took only a few seconds for Andy to explain the problem :

Mama didn’t raise no fool, I don’t know why or how, but I know this domain has the proverbial “TR0”.

Translate TR0 by TrustRank 0. While the site may have had some links, Andy realized that he had no “trusted links”.

So I grabbed it every trusted link that I could (quickly) — Dir.yahoo.com, Sbd.bcentral.com, Business.com, a hosted adverpage on an older domain, and an in-content link from an old, ranking (trusted) related site that a friend owns (Thanks mate!)… Two days later, bam! 28 pages in, four days later, 160 pages in.

I think his experience reminds us that each site needs to pass the “Google Trust Test” before getting fully indexed and get the rankings it deserves.