A whopping 277 days have passed since the last time Google’s stock closed above $600, a fact of which we’re sure at least a few shareholders were all too aware.  But fortunately for both investors and the company itself, Google’s now reset the clock, closing above $600 again today.

Google’s excellent third quarter earnings report is largely responsible for this achievement.  As we noted after the search giant delivered the report, Google showed strength in all sorts of categories, and has enough cash lying around to qualify as a not-too-small country.

Google’s stock rose $60.52 today as a result, which works out to a startling gain of 11.19 percent.

That puts the company in a very good position heading into the holiday season.  Google often sees a spike around the end of the year, and now it’ll have a better starting point.

For the sake of Google critics and anyone who’s formally bet against the company, we’ll point out that there is one problem, however: it’s still quite a ways off its all-time high of $741.79 (which it hit on November 6, 2007).