The short answer is, "yes" (I think). That said, there are many factors when it comes to links.
Some of the different kinds of links:
Authority Links
Link Farms/Networks
Directory Links
Guest Author Links / Article Links - Author Bio
Bait & Switch
Low Quality Press Release
Link Exchanges/Reciprocal/Wheels etc…
Run of Site Links
Paid Content Links
Blog Spam Links
Article Marketing
Repurposed Domains
Forum Links
Purchased Links
Social Media Links
One way trusted links
Gov and Edu Links
Then there are the characteristics of the links themselves:
Page Rank / Link weight - Yep. Page Rank.
IP range - are your links spread across different IP blocks?
Breaking news - is this a link about a recent hot topic?
Trust Rank/Authority - Trust Rank.
Age of Link - << your question is concerning this
Link Velocity - what is the rate your site gains links? What is normal in your niche?
Page on topic - does the linking page have the same topic as the target?
Website on topic - does the linking website have the same topic?
Internal topical support - how much does the linking website support the linking page?
Link churn - how often do links change?
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but should provide an idea of the complications surrounding links (over 24,000 combinations). Add in to the mix the fact that links are constantly being removed, added or devalued. Which has a direct impact on the characteristics listed above AND ALL THE SITES DOWNSTREAM.
One reason why aged links have value:
>> Link age can't be faked.
This may be the
Google patent you mentioned.
From the above link:
The date of appearance/change of the document containing a link may be a better indicator of the freshness of the link based on the theory that a good link may go unchanged when a document gets updated if it is still relevant and good.
... generating a score includes: determining a measure of freshness of links associated with the document, assigning weights to the links based on the determined measure of freshness, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the weights assigned to the links associated with the document.
... the measure of freshness of a link associated with the document is based on at least one of a date of appearance of the link, a date of a change to the link, a date of appearance of anchor text associated with the link, a date of a change to anchor text associated with the link, a date of appearance of a linking document containing the link, or a date of a change to a linking document containing the link.
Yes, you can bait and switch the content, but the age of the link is fixed. When nearly everything can be faked to one degree or another - the age of an incoming link is fixed. Also, Google is looking:
...determining whether a content of the document changes such that the content differs from anchor text associated with one or more links to the document, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on whether the content of the document changes such that the content differs from the anchor text associated with one or more links to the document.
I am not suggesting, and neither does the Google patent, that old links are more powerful than newer links - only that age has a measurable quality that can be beneficial or not depending on the topic and kind of website. If you have a site about celebrities or politics a fresh link can be just as powerful as an old link (see the above patent).
Finally - it's always good to get a clean link from a powerful, trusted authority website.
