Why do some sites appear to be pre-destined to succeed or fail?

Site A: crappy tool site has been around for 2-3 years, and shows
at least 80+ million results....

Site B: has been around for 5+ years, rec'd a million+ investment
and only has 20 million related results. How can they earn all this
money, plus huge investment, and not overpower SiteA?

Site C: has been up/active/ rolling for 12-13 years (still up)
and they only have 4 million results....

So you put up a site, then 12-13 years later, if you are lucky,
you may have 4 million results (if it is a decent site)
Is this guy even still bringing home the bacon?

I just dont get it....

 

Please define "results" for me...

 

Google search results....

 

by results you mean indexed pages?

Site A: 80+ million indexed pages
Site B: 20 million indexed pages
Site C: 4 million indexed pages

If so, I would say that is a factor in success, but can be a misleading one. I have millions of indexed pages that make little to no money, where a mere handful of other pages can make a lot. It really comes down to ranking more than just indexed pages. Also, there are obviously sites that can make far more money with fewer indexed pages than other sites with many times more pages. Either they rank better, they get more views/traffic, they are better monetized, etc. It is very hard to judge success when looking only to a single metric.

 

URLS for A, B, C?