Does content age count?

[Whitey]

Some old sites , maybe 8 years old with fairly static content are ranking ahead of much newer sites of maybe 2 years old , arguably with better overall content. And these older sites have very few links.

On the other hand I hear about, and see sites with fresh content that also rank highly. Yet I'm also seeing sites with newly added URL's / content being slow to rank [ new and old ].

What place is the age of a site's content playing it's part in the SERP's ?

[tedster]

As you're seeing, the age of content can have different importance for different types of sites - and different types of queries. Sometimes freshness is more important, sometimes long-term stability is more important.

When it comes to long term unchanging content, it's ability of continue attracting fresh backlinks is important. Otherwise, as times goes by, rankings may start to fail unless it has some very powerful backlinks from high authority sites.