Keep Static layout or Database Dynamic for google

I don't think the URL itself has anything much to do with ranking these days.

There are quite a few e-commerce packages that support any url format so you could make the change to a dynamic site but maintain the old urls

I seem to find that static seems to get a slight edge and is easier to work with in the long run. Although full site overhauls are a huge pain.

I don't think the URL itself has anything much to do with ranking these days.

Really? I'd love to hear why as that caught me by surprise. I still find that old, established and well sniffed urls seem important.

If age of site matters then age of url must too, no?

Ah - yes, the "age" of the URL certainly plays into things, but not so much the actual characters that are used. That's what I was pointing to - the charaters in the URL - and it's my growing sense over the past few years from redevelopment projects I've been involved with.

Years back, there was almost a guaranteed ranking boost gained from moving to pretty, nicely keyworded URLs. This was especially so when technically sound 301 redirects were in place along with fanatical elimination of canonical issues.

More and more, I don't see the same boost, even when moving from the messiest URL structures and I've given that a lot of thought. It occurs to me that Google really wants to assess the content itself, along with it's user engagement. After all, why would they want to reward merely technical achievements if they don't have to? Their users certainly don't care much about such things.

Adn so I see Google has picked up all manner of other relevance cues and they depend less and less on the almost mechanical factors such as the URL characters and keywords.

There are other factors to consider as well. For example, the URL can affect the CTR from the Google SERPs. A short URL containing the keywords is more likely to be clicked than long nonsensical URL.