I've noticed over the past 4 months that brand new sites tend to come in at positions over 100 after on-page optimisation and indexing is complete, whereas in the past a new site could rank much higher than this at the start, but would tend to fluctuate more.
Anyone else noticed this ? Is it a rankbrain thing ?
Cheers,
Gary.
I think that was more often called the 'honeymoon' period. G Dance was when rankings stayed static until a 'dance of the results' when they updated their index... though they stopped that about 10+(?) years ago.
It sounds like you're describing the sandbox.
Yes, I have not worked with a brand new site for a while, but changing a sites direction recently took about 6 months. (2014/15). So a very old domain, but it was a b&b and now its a product specific review site.
I tend to launch a basic site within hours of a new idea, get a couple of links to it, get it indexed, and then it matures while I worry about getting the rest sorted. So I tend not to track that time now.
Thanks, learnt a lot from these replies, didn't know about the sandbox, that got me reading for hours :)