Can anyone tell me if Google holds back new sites and if so how long or is that the $64,000 question?
They hold back new sites, from what I can recall its known as the sandbox or something like that, How long? Sorry I don't know! Maybe some other DP memeber can answer, but to be honest I think only Google know the answer to this question!
Websites age is important... And, in future will probably be more and more important... Trust and autorithy have a significant role
Often though you get a free kickstart in the first few months were they see if you are "worthy" of a high SERP or not. And then you fall back to your ordinary place, and yes, then website age is a factor.
With age comes trust, untrusted sites do not rank well. There is a dispute as to whether an actual "sandbox" exists but it is obvious to almost all webmasters that new sites take a while to rank well.
Most of the replies you'll get here will be based on their own experiences. It would be really hard for me or us to say really which is which. Again, Google will only know the answer to your question for sure. Experience based, they might slightly do hold back new websites but not at all times. It would really depend and it is also a case-to-case basis.
that is not always the case, I find in many cases that a site's age trumps fresh/quality content in the beginning when the site is less than a year old so fresh content does not always matter at first even if you update daily
I'm not sure I understand your response, but my experience has been for any of my online assets that if I post fresh content I will not be sandboxed. All things being equal for a new site, the one that posts fresh content will avoid the sandbox, and if it is sandboxed it will be there for a much shorter amount of time than if there were no new content being posted. I have tested it and proven it time and again.
You got it! That is exactly it right there..... Age is a factor always....How long you register your domain for is too.
IMO - its pretty obvious that google weighs the website's age heavily. I can't say I blame the big G. Things come and go so quickly. Why not trust a website with a longer presence?
Actually Google Sandbox - this term is created behind on it. It is said by the SEO experts that when a new site is submitted it's put on hold in the sand box and Google check the relevancy and authenticity of the website, the time duration is still not perfectly declared, but may be some days , some weeks or months also. It is advised to work on continuously on your new site and after some time, it would come out from the sand box and shows it's keywords visibility in the SERPs.
In my experience google won't hold back a new site unless there is a reason for doing so i.e a suspected spam site
well..i don't think that there is something like holding back any sites. logically it doesn't make any sense. New or old what it has to do with google. Google is a search engine that provides search results to its users. new sites generally have less backlinks/votes, content, users, relevancy to target keywords, page rank etc that's why this scenario is under the clouds.
Do not know how long this problem, and prevent the new Google site, it may be fall into the sandbox, and to ensure that the content of the qualitative.
In my own experiences, Google would not do such thing. On the contrary, Google loves new sites and usually give a higher ranking for new sites. Of course, the SERP would fluctuate more frequently since your new sites are in the sandbox. all the best,