TrustRank?

[chromate]

If what you mean by "good backlinks" is on-topic, non-spammy sites, then what you wrote would fit right in with that theory I think.

Not really. I do think it's important to get links from well related sites. Although, even this is still debatable. But it does make sense.

However, I don't think that poor quality links will hurt a site. The idea with TrustRank is that links from poor quality sites will produce a negative result or, as the author of that article called it, AntiTrust.

The other thing I don't like about it is...

It uses human reviewers to compile a seed set of a few hundred or so sites. From these sites and pages trust passes through to other sites.

A few hundred sites? Considering google has to rank over 8 billion pages, I don't think that would cut it really. It's also clear that google like to have everything nicely automated. I doubt they would really like the idea of having human reviewers selecting these "trusted site" seeds.

[Chris]

It appears that how long a domain has been registered or how long a domain has been in Googles' database has some affect on your SERP ranking.

Possibly -- but this reminds me of an example from my college psychology class.

You do a study that shows children that come from homes with newer appliances do better in school. Is it right to conclude then that appliances make children smart?

Of course not, instead it simply means that newer appliances are usually owned by wealthier families and wealthier families usually have more educated parents and more educated parents tend to have smarter children.

So sure, older sites do better in Google, but is it really because Google gives them a direct bonus? Or rather because they have accumulated more/better links? Perhaps Google is weighting links somewhat on the age of the link. Which is similar to ranking a site on age, but not exactly the same.