About a month ago, I saw some early discussions within the more blackhat SEO communities about a Google Sandbox 2.0, where Google began targeting possibly churn and burn sites from ranking well. That conversation is now creeping into the mainstream SEO forums, outside of the more blackhat forums.
As I said back then, the Google Sandbox was a term coined back in 2004 when SEOs and webmaster began noticing their new sites were not ranking as quickly as they use to. In short, your new site got put into a sandbox, where you waited, until you would rank.
That has not been talked about much in years but there are always some webmasters and SEOs that bring it up. Truth is, new sites can rank fast in Google these days, if they meet Google's algorithms requirements.
But now, it seems to have cropped back up again. I even asked Google's Mueller about the Sandbox and he said it would be a good thing, not confirming or denying it either way.
The conversation is now being discussed in a mainstream SEO/webmaster forum at WebmasterWorld.
I know many of you doubt the Sandbox ever existed but it did, in my opinion. If I had to guess, Google has released some algorithm that may resemble the old Sandbox in the past couple months.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.