From 0 to 72 indexed pages in 2 months: what Google actually does with new sites

I've been building Convertify — a free image converter in Rust + Next.js — for about 2 months. Here's where I am in GSC right now: 72 indexed pages Average position: 40.8 Impressions: ~90/day Clicks: basically 1 Not glamorous. But I spent time researching what's actually happening under the hood, and it changed how I think about the whole thing. The "Google Sandbox" thing Everyone talks about it. New site, no traffic, must be the sandbox right? John Mueller said it directly in 2019: "There is no