Well, this is just a theory that I based from my personal experience when i built an mp3 download site last December 2004.

First and foremost, what is “sandbox”?
Sandbox is the term used by webmasters who specialized on search engine marketing and search engine optimization as the probitionary status of a new published website in search engine results, particularly Google. If a website is in the sandbox, it ranks very low in search engine results using the targeted keywords, even if the website has sufficient number of backlinks and almost perfectly optimize. According to experienced webmasters, the website stay in the sandbox for almost 4 - 6 months or sometimes even more longer. Base on my experience, my website “pinoysites.org” that i had launched on the last week of January 2005, stayed in the sand box for 4 months until June this year. Unfortunately, it was penalized for some reason 2 weeks later.

Going back to my theory about the advantage of free webhosting. Publishing your website using free web hosting services like Geocities, freewebs, netfirms, etc., (I use redrival and freewebs), does not undergo Google sandbox. If your website has enough number of inbound links and once the search engine bot index your webpages, it can easily top the search engine positions even in a most competitive keywords. Based on my experience, it took two to three weeks after being pick up by search engines to rank high in search engine results.

Well, that was only based on my experience. There could be other possible factors, that make my website rank high in search engine results, that i do not know. You can also use free web hosting services for other reason like “it`s free”.
Take note also of the disadvantages of free webhosting,
1. You don`t own the domain, so the host can easily cancel, edit, or even stole your account.
2. Some free webhost force your web pages to show annoying ads and pop-ups.
3. Most of the web directories does not accept websites that is hosted for free.

To visit my referenced website, try searching “free filipino mp3 download”, without the quotes in Yahoo, Google and MSN. Take note that i did not maintain the website for almost 4 months until now, so it gradually slide on Google search result ranking. But it is still number 1 in Yahoo and Number 2 in MSN.