SEO is not really something I focus on, but I consider myself a jack of
all trades so I try to keep up on the news.  I consider SEO a
black art that should only be talked about on stormy nights while
people dance around the fire.

All of that aside, the good people at google have filed Patent
Application 20050071741.  And the benifit of such and event for us
is that they must describe the process by which they rank our
sites.  This information includes tidbits such as  the lenght
of time that the domain has been registered is a consideration, as well
they have put extra emphasis on not ranking spammers.

A great review of the strategies employed can be found out Buzzle.com.  So take a look and get your sites the ranking they deserve.

Although In truth, there is nothing really shocking.  If you have
good content that gets updated regularly, and others link to you
because they recognize you have quality content, then you are pretty
safe to begin with :)