I just checked Google SERPs today for “seocontest2008“, to discover that the site has dropped to the 80th position (over 50 spots down). Unless this is a temporarily glitch, I guess it’s time to say goodbye to this contest. Or is it the Sandbox effect that finally comes into play? It would have chosen the worst time possible 
I just checked the SERPs today my site is down to the 29th position on Google search for “seocontest2008“, and in the contestants rankings I am just at the outside of the top 20. Looks like I have got some work to do if I am to achieve my top 10 objective. Hopefully next week I should get some time finally to do a little bit of link building that should help the site achieve its objective. In terms of onsite optimization I think that most have been done, although I guess a few more posts won’t hurt 
The (Google) Sandbox is a penalty that new sites face within the first weeks they are launched. Basically it means that pending an aging process, Google doesn’t consider your site trustworthy and therefore push its rankings way below where it should normally be. When you get out of the Sandbox (after 6~9 months or more) you will then gain the position your site deserved, which can be a jump of tens of hundreds of positions for highly optimized and well linked sites. The Sandbox effect seems to happen more with highly competitive keywords (web hosting is one), but Google has never confirmed its existence. In fact, webmasters are divided between believers and non-believers of the Sandbox very existence.
For a two months SEO contests, one of my worries was that top domains registered just for the contest, at a certain point of time, will be facing the Sandbox effect, resulting in severe drops in the rankings. Probably, many webmasters who have chosen to participate with a sub-domain or sub-site of an existing site, not only have to save the few domain registrations bucks, but also to avoid altogether the Sandbox effect. That seemed to be the right strategy at the beginning of the contest, but after several weeks most of the top 10 sites have largely dropped while new comers, on new domains have moved higher. Now 4 to 5 sites of the top 10 are on new domains.
So the question is:
-Did the Sandbox effect not apply because seocontest2008 is not (yet) a competitive keyword?
-Will the Sandbox effect come into effect prior to the end of the contest?
-Will it come after (therefore irrelevant to this contest)?
-Does the Sandbox exist at the first place???
Your thoughts.