Reading Google's patent filing it appears that they rely heavily on web site links and anchor text in their algorithm. The items below were some of the items the patent said they look for:

-- Tracking of the appearance and disappearance of links over specific times
-- Tracking of growth rates of links in other web sits
-- Tracking of anchor text and dates established and how they change over time
-- Older established links get a higher rating than newer less established links
-- Fresh pages might be considered more important
-- New web sites don't normally have a lot of links, but if they come from established web sites they will be tolerated
-- Older pages that don't change very often but have incoming links growth over time can be considered fresh
-- Burst link growth may indicate spamming of the index
-- Anchor text should vary and not be the same from all incoming sources
-- Web site link growth should be consistent and slow

Based on the latest patent filing from Google the answer to this question is yes. Google states that how a site is hosted and the length of time that a domain name has been paid for does help in how a web site ranks. Google considers a domain name that has been paid for, for more than one year a more credible domain since throwaway domains are rarely used for more than one year. Google looks at the following information:

-- how long has the domain name been paid for in years
-- how long has the hosting company been around
-- how many web pages the web site has (one page is not good)
-- who the owner, admin and contact names are in the registrars records

Google keeps track of bad name servers and can tell whether or not a spammer is running a domain.

Following the steps above could make your rankings improve!

As if we didn't already know that the secrets of Google were being exposed, this week Google applied for a patent that pretty much details some of their algorithmic patterns. There is a mountain range of ranking analysis techniques. One would assume that if they are important enough to patent then they must be part of their algorithm.

I'm just glad to see that the theory that there is a sandbox, or a holding bin if you will of web sites that are held for a period of time is true. After launching numerous web sites and pulling our hairs out wondering why our listings were taking so long this is much welcomed news!

Link to Google Patent

Links are what makes a popular web site even more popular. Google spiders and indexes links just like they spider and index web sites. If Google has spidered and  indexed the web site that links to you than you will gain in popularity. With that popularity your web site can move up in the search engines index. Google as far as anyone can tell is updating their links database every 7 to 12 weeks. If you want to find out if a web page that contains your link is in Google's database type info:www.yoursite.com into the search field and you will see if that page is indexed or not. If it isn't than naturally that link as it stands today won't benefit you until it is in the engines database. It's important to recognize that a good link building campaign is an on-going process that will have positive long-term results.

Hilltop is one of the main algorithm concepts that the search engines use. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN use the basic algorithm concept that Hilltop defines but they modify it to their individual requirements.

One of the main concepts of Hilltop is to define relevancy based on weather or not a site is an authority. A site can gain authority by having inbound (inbound links create better value) and outbound links that correspond to their local topical community, otherwise known as popularity. One way that Google ranks popularity is it gives each web page a measured PageRank. So a site that has many inbound links based on a topic of interest can be considered a authority site or a expert on a particular subject.

So that maybe one reason why older sites are better listed than newer sites. Since building a linking campaign takes time a site cannot become an authority overnight, it takes time. So to get started on becoming an authority in your field try to get inbound links from niche sites, directory sites like DMOZ, and resource pages that pertain to your topic of interest. Continue to do this and over time you will see your web site rankings improve.

Read more on Hilltop
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/

The main reason to redirect anyone to another site or another page on a web site is because a page and or web site has moved.  The redirect may point to another site or a subdirectory. You may also have different domain extensions like .net, .org, .info that you want to point to your main .com extension. There are numerous ways to redirect domains, but it's important to note the correct ways to do redirects.

One of the ways that people do redirects is via a JavaScript meta-refresh tag. While this works the search engines frown on it's use because you could create a page to rank high in the search engines and then redirect them to another page. So search engines can penalize you for the use of this tag.

Some webmasters use parked domains to redirect to other sites, so they may but 5 domains for example and have them all point to the same domain. What happens here is the search engines now think that you have 5 different web sites when actually you only have one. Once the search engines realize what's going on chances are you will be removed from all the SERP's because of a duplicate content penalty, and it will take you considerable work to get re-listed.

To do a proper redirect you want to do a 301 or 302 redirects, depending on what you are trying to do. From a search engines point of view the only proper redirect is a 301 redirect which states that the redirect is permanent. A 301 redirect is instituted on the server and it carries over whatever link popularity that it has to the new URL. A 302 redirect is considered a temporary move and in most cases link popularity is not transferred over which can effect ranking negatively.

 A lot of SEO's, web developers / web designers are questioning what is happening with their new web sites and why they aren't showing up in the SERP's in and around the first 3 pages of Google. The SERP's on MSN and Yahoo are providing them with good placement in their normal amount of time, so what gives?

The "Sandbox Effect" means that Google is somehow not returning new sites near the top of the SERP's until the site has been fathered in if you will.  Then the next question that remains to be answered is when is a site considered fathered in? From what anyone can tell at this time the answer is anywhere from 3 to 8 months.

So in closing it appears that Google made some type of change to their algorithm sometime in mid to late 2004 that checks a sites age in the index. So all SEO's out there can stop tweaking and messing with their code over and over thinking it's them because that most definitely is not the case!

The only alternative that I have been able to come up with as a short term remedy to the problem is to do some Pay Per Click advertising with Overture and Google. MSN also has a new Pay Per Click solution that it will be introducing shortly, so stay tuned for that. The good thing about starting with pay per click is you will be able to play with different keywords and see what type of positive results you get with different keywords and keyphrases.

More often than not my clients will ask what is the most important facet of optimizing a web site for the search engines? The answer to this question is keyword research.

In order for web site optimization to succeed and succeed well there needs to be extensive keyword research and analysis. Generally your not going to find too many, if any one word keywords to use on a new site that are highly competitive. So it's instrumental that researching the competition and analyzing the industry for the best keywords and keyphrases be done. To be done correctly time must to spent on this analysis.

Not doing the proper keyword research is the biggest mistake that any SEO company can make. It is what will make the web site optimization a success or a failure. With all of the off-page and on-page work that needs to be done for good optimization to occur, not having the right keywords will make the whole process a waste of time and energy. So to have a successful SEO campaign insure that time is taken to find the right keywords and phrases for your web site.