Site age and the new algo

I think its a factor because..

[Powdork]

I mentioned in the the GoogleGram about expired domains thread that I would be back with more on this. You were warned.
I purchased a domain in August. It never expired (to the best of my knowledge) however it was offline for about 4 months after being in the Google index since the early days. When it came back up it was with different whois data and substantially more and different content. I would think this would be the type of thing that would trip their expired domain filter. The original site was a book about the services in location and the new site is a directory of services in location. For the search 'location services' it ranked
Sep - NA
Oct - NA
Nov - 51 :)
Dec - 29 :)
Jan - 15 :)
Feb - 25 :(

Here are some details.
Google shows my backlinks went from 28 to 36 with equal increases below the pr threshhold. Only one of the sites that moved up in the serps and none of those that I fell behind added any links for this update.
My site is pr 5. There are 2 pr 6 above, the rest are 5's and 4's.
My site has more content than 90% of the sites above, all original.
When searching allinanchor:location services, my site ranks #1 (in fact it moved from #2 this update).
This only appeared to affect the index page. The category pages all still rank #1 for their respective searches.
This is NOT a case of losing links that the old site had attained. They had one listing in Yahoo! from a pr 1 page. I contacted Y! and they were kind enough to give me two listings in the new appropriate categories.

There are two possibilities I can see.
1. The length your site has been around matters or the age of links
matters (longer is better).
2. Internal anchor text is not weighted as strongly as before.

Personally, I think if internal anchor text weighting had changed it would be a very much discussed topic here already. Also, since my company name is Location Services.com, the external backlinks tend to all have the proper anchor text as well.

This is the first time since I started this SEO stuff that I've ever had a page go backwards for a search. Everything I know tells me this should have gone to the first page this month.
Anyone have any other ideas?

[edited by: Marcia at 8:02 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2003]

[Powdork]

For the purposes of this equation the domain is locationservices.com and the page title is Keyword Location Services at Location Services.com.
All of these are fictitious and any similarity with actual persons, organisations, or events is purely coincidental.;)

[Jesse_Smith]

Yes, age is part of it. For my major keyword, my first site that I made in 1996 is #3, only behind two Official links, keyword.com. Site that I made in 2000 is #15 for that keyword, next site I made is at #27.

[Powdork]

Thanks. I'm talking more specifically about with this update however.

[Powdork]

OK
A domain's age, in and of itself, is not a factor in my site's drop in the serps. It is due to a drop in pr not resulting in a change in the toolbar pr. I didn't realise it but when I went back over my backlinks more closely I noticed that the Yahoo listings that I had requested to be changed resulted in losing a PR 5 Y! listing in return for a PR 2. Also, one of my main links had lost a pr 6 link and while the site is still pr 5 it has gone from a posimage size of 22 to 16 on the Google directory bar graph (view source next to your listing).
The Good news-
I get way more traffic from the new Yahoo listings (pr 1 and 2) than I ever did from the pr 5 listing.
Today I got five pr 5 links. I paid $36 for one I expect a decent amount of traffic from.
Happy Dayz