How does it take after getting links discovered by google to see increase in rankings?

[Ron10]

Five of my friends linked to my site from their website and updated their sites through  Google Webmaster tools right after linking to my site.  Though the Google spider crawled the site as soon as they updated their pages, it still took about three weeks for my site to get a bump in the serps from their links.  Why does it take that long for links to kick in and what is the average time it normally takes to see an increase in ranking from links once Google discovers them?

Thanks mozzers!

Ron

[Charlessipe]

In my experience it has taken about 2-4 weeks to see noticeable results after winning a good number of high quality links. It really varies depending on your niche and competition. Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive talks about a client who received links from highly authoritative sites but saw no improvement in rankings. Other times you will see a site with a bunch of spammy links skyrocket to the first position. My approach is to just create the best content on the web so you deserve to outrank your competitors and your chances of improving rankings in the long run will be maximized.

[icecarats]

I think you have to consider the scale of the enterprise; it's easy to think of Google as being some kind of video game that responds to your input as soon as you make it (note to self: make Video Game about SEO. Possible titles: Link Awakening, The Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past). Also consider the number of links you're talking about; I'm surprised you saw any movement for just five links.

To me, Google's response (including time it takes them to notice) to a link is kind of ineffable. Charles' advice is pretty good. If you're solely concentrating on number of links and what affect they'll have you might be doing the wrong kind of SEO.