Swebbie - 5:25 pm on Jun 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

You already know that FEW that are NEW, best, most thorough, most authoritative AND INNOVATIVE (that's the most important IMO) sites are doing well in Google very quickly.

Yes, I did already know that, which is the problem if you want to believe that Google's STATED goal of providing the most relevant search results isn't a lie.

If we are speaking for "best, most thorough, most authoritative" sites on "Blue Widgets" then that's another story...

Why should it matter what the topic is? Again, I'm referring to what Google tells the world about their goals. If they aren't lying, then the age of a site would be utterly irrelevant in rankings and the actual INFORMATION and/or PRODUCTS being provided would be the heavily favored means of deciding who gets ranked where on any given search. They're lying to you... stop believing what they spew.

And I still have not received a reply from you regarding how i.e. a new online store would perform in the real world (with the exception of a store that sells trips to the moon! this is new and innovative indeed and would gain many authoritative backlinks!).

"new online" and "real world" are not the same thing, as you know. Google purports to produce the most relevant results they can, but they ignore new sites carte blanche. C'mon man, how can you possibly argue that these two behaviors are congruous? The analogy would be if the yellow pages refused to list your new bricks-and-mortar store in their pages for 6 months to a year. See?

I am sorry but I think you are overreacting.

Honestly, I'm really not. I think I'm making a basic point, but I don't lose one bit of sleep over any of this. I find it an interesting debate, but that's the end of it for me. I do just fine with traffic to my 10 sites from Yahoo, MSN, and all the links I've negotiated from related sites. Would I love to be ranked well at Google? Of course. If you're in business online, you want that. But it isn't necessary to be successful. And I hate liars. :-)