Welcome to the Q&A Forum

This topic still seems unclear in the SEO world. Even "experts" can't seem to give a satisfying answer, so I'm challenging Rand Fishkin and/or associates to answer this one, for the community's sake!

With respect to choosing a domain, which is better? And why?

Aged domain (without pre-existing backlinks) OR Expired domain (with pre-existing backlinks)?

Looking forward to your response SEOmoz

I've got a domain which was registered in July 2010 and had a website on it. I believe the domain expired and it was dropped for a couple of months.

I snapped it up after discovering it in November 2012. Subsequently, the whois records show the domain was created in Nov 2012.

What exactly is the "real" age of this domain from Google's perspective? Or at least, as far as SEO is concerned?

Cheers,
Syed

P.S - domain age does indeed warrant some merit in ranking factors!