How much does age of domain affect SERP ?

Age does play a role. It depends on many factors but, that is definitely one.

Yes well Im asking about the age as a factor here.
It must have a significant effect but I have heard of people getting new sites a few months old up on page 1 of google but maybe thats for some obscure serch terms

Let me start off by saying I am NO SEO guru.
However, in my experience, the primary reason
that one site gets ranked over another is relevance.
I believe the age plays more of an indirect role in that
the page has been around long enough to...
-get seen more times
-get linked to more times
-be indexed and re-indexed more times

Case in point, I have a real estate website
that I put together back in November. I
bought the domain name that matched the
keywords I wanted to target and threw the site
together. There really isn't much to it. Just a
single page with an IDX (Realtor search engine)
in an iframe.

Within one week, the site was in pos. #9 on Google.
After two months (several backlinks and increased
popularity among searchers), it moved up to #2.
Real estate is a HIGHLY competitive industry, especially
on the internet. But so few people are actually providing
something of value (i.e. a search WITHOUT hassling them
for contact info), that the popularity of my site sky-rocketed.

Haven't done a great deal of research, but it seemed that my
site jumped 7 BIG positions after I had made a few posts
in a Real Estate forum with backlinks.

You could say that my site increased its rank due to age,
but I think that's missing the point. My site jumped
because it appeared more relevant to human surfers, and
Google LOVES that.

Without taking a look at your site, my basic advice would be
find a way to get people to stay longer and come back.
Google notices and tracks these sorts of things.

Is there some sort of free service or product you can offer
without needing to ask for contact info, a sale, etc.? Is there
a daily or weekly report or blog you can add? Dynamic content
usually helps quite a bit. But again, it isn't because the
content is dynamic, its because you are providing more relevance
to the visitors and a more robust experience.

Hey grumpy,
Sorry.
Didn't mean to imply that your site wasn't relevant. Merely to
draw a more specific correlation to the ranking than age alone.
The length of time a site has been published allows it to build
more links, visits, etc. So, on the surface, the age seems like
the difference, but there are more likely some lurking variables.

I took a look at your links.

Have you considered some dynamic content on your site? Maybe
I overlooked it, but could you add a blog or something that would
make the experience more interactive? Specifically with the topic
of children, this could be a great place for a parent network community.
The extra traffic and content would likely get you a ranking boost.

The older the age of the domain name, the easiest it is to get better position in Google.
New domain name might face google sandbook but old domain will now

Winson

This thread reminds me that if you want to capitilize on the age factor- you should register a domain of your future site - even if you're not going to work on it right away.

When you're ready to work on it - it would have aged a bit - and the search engines would love it - but of course taking into account all other SEO factors

I thought my OP made it clear
I have a n enormous amount of backlinks 1400+ against the the number 2 and 3 who have few
I have at least 3 time as many quality good relevent PR back links
My site is totaly about the search term
I do not have the keywords in my url but neither does the number 1 2 or 3
The only factor I can find is the age of the site

hi grumpy,

personally i believe age is a factor and backlinks obviously help, however is your site optimized, at least to basic SEO 101 standards?

just a thought...

also have you extended registration on your domain too? is it a .com or another TLD?

there are so many factors to look at it is difficult to say without actually viewing it and the other competition

you mention your site is "totaly about the search term" is it possible your over saturating your keyword density?

hope that helps

Age definitely is a factor.

I had 2 keyword related domains aged 1yr and 4 years.

Both had original content.
And the one with age 4yrs ranked higher .

So i guess its age

Just to bring you up to date
My site is a PR4 on 10 out of 12 pages
It is totaly on topic
It is on page opyimised using IBP as a tool
It is currently sitting at number 22 on Google for its major search term
It has now showing 1700 + back links

On page 1 of Google there are 5 sites that have less than 50 back links (according to backlinkchecker.net) The sites have IMO less relevance and less on topic content than I do.
The only thing they have that my site does not is Age.

I may of course be in the Sand Box!
but no matter what I do This site seems stuck at number 22

Given the large number of sites on page 1 with few back links and not much on page SEO or content I am starting to think that AGE plays a much larger factor than people are thinking ?

Google search "SEOmoz SERP Factors" and click on the first listing.

The experts rank the age of domain as the #4 highest factor.

Rand believes it's not even on his top 10, as long as the site ages past 2 years, every other factor becomes more prominent.

I just found this which is well worth a read

Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist