It really depends on the site, the niche and a lot of things.

Sorry to say that but I think you are over simplifying.

I think that eltercerhombre is right; this is an oversimplification. We all would like to have our or our customers' sites immediately ranked, but if this happened maybe Google were not as good a search engine as it is. And if it weren't, the visitors we want to attract to our website would not use it. So we could rank no. 1 for our favourite keyword in seconds, but it would not do us much good.

Good results need time to have the websites' value considered. Work does not end with the robot's task!

Oh, wait. Is this an April Fools prank? :-)

I'm kind of surprised by the results of the poll so far. I would've thought the majority would be closer to 9 months to a year. I agree with the other comments here too. It's hard to define "ranks well." Is that only in Google? Is it for long tail keywords, or high traffic keywords, or both? Is the first page, or spots 1-3 defined as ranking well? A lot to consider...

I agree with all above comments. It's all based on the site and the industry.

I put 3-6 months, which is probably the average. There are so many factors involved, however, almost any answer could be right. The amount of competition, the age of a site, and the competition all influence success.

I know everyone makes more of ranking well in Google than really need be the case. Social Bookmarking, RSS Feeds, Article Marketing will in fact bring you to page one in Google within 2 weeks tops. The simplicity exists because of the use of the longtail keyword application. Google is really quite simple & logical.

I just finished a case study and proved it works and does so at zero cost. It does of course take work on your part to achieve this. If you are a small business and want front page exposure sooner than later, I know from where I speak to work very well.

It all begins with proper research of long tail keywords. Get that right & everything falls into place .. get it wrong & you are just wasting a great deal of time.

It's not rocket science folks !!!

agree with above posters, not so simple answer to this question.

my simple answer

1. site is new and competition is very low
good rankings within the same month or even week

2. site is new and compettion is high
might take 3-6 months for google to even show initial results!

3. site is very old and competiotion is low
good rankings within the same month

4. site is very old and competition is high
good rankings within the first 3 months

About 2 months.