mfishy - 1:28 am on Apr 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

this is not how web sites develop in an organic fashion

Wrong.

Charity that started about 6 months ago launched website at the end of January. Was linked to from dmoz/google directory and most other directories that allow non-profits. Also generated around 50 unsolicited links - some from PR7-8 pages. Doesn't show up for even the most obscure terms while the pages that link to it (older) do. This is how the web works. It is 100% organic. Every SE other than Google lists them on their appropriate terms as it is not a common cause for charity.

depending on the industry sector you are competing in Google is simply dialing back

Nope. We track 500 keywords/phrases in dozens of different areas and have not found a SINGLE case of a page from a site entering the top 10 if they were not allready in the top 100 in the past 7 weeks or so. In other words, no new sites have ranked in two months across 500 phrases.

I am sure there are exceptions, but unless you are studying a largish set of data, it's not really that interesting for this discussion - ya know the "MY site is ranking great and was put online yesterday because I am an expert seo" type posts :)