How important is the age of a domain name in SEO?

One of the important factors in Google’s search engine algorithm is the age of a domain name. It gives the appearance of longevity and scores a higher relevancy in Google.
For example, in business people tend to trust a business that has been around for a long time over a brand new business. The same is the case for websites. In fact one should register the domain before opening the business.
The age of the website and length of time a domain has been registered are considered in the age of a domain name.
The age of the website is built up on following basis:
a)How long the content is on the web.
b)When was the last time the content was updated?
c)How long the site has been in promotion.
In latest updates by Google, some of the big changes seen were the importance given to age; date the domain was registered, age of web content and age of incoming links. One of the ways used by Google to minimize spam is by giving new websites a waiting period before giving them any PageRank. This is referred to as the ‘Sand box effect’. The idea behind this is that Google wants to see if the new site is serious about staying around. Although it is a disappointment for new websites but there are some things to do while waiting for the sandbox period to expire, such as concentrating on back links strategies, PPC, article promotion, RSS feed etc.
Even though the domain’s age is a factor, according to critics it only gets a little weight in the algorithm. As one has no control over the age of the domain, it does not necessarily mean that your site is not going to rank well in search engines just because you have a new domain.