Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University studies the stars around which planets have been found. He explained that detecting a planet with an orbital period of 12 years — similar to the time it takes Jupiter to go around the sun — would require collecting data over the course of a full orbit. With roughly 15 years of research under Marcy and his colleagues’ belts, that discovery could be close at hand.
“I would not be surprised by an announcement any day now,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez is surprised that the venerable planet-hunting team has not already announced planets with orbits approaching Jupiter’s. “They should have already announced eight- and 10-year periods,” he said. “I don’t know what’s taking them so long.”
Maybe they don’t exist?
“We’ll see,” Gonzalez said with an optimistic grin.
Marcy said more data is needed to detect planets with 10- or 15-year orbits, but he thinks it’s likely they exist.

Of roughly 3,500 relatively nearby, sunlike stars — all within about 160 light-years — the researchers selected about 1,200 as being the most amenable to harboring planets. Young stars and tight-orbiting pairs of stars were not included.
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Great article. It's stuff like this that brings me here.
There seems to be a slight contradiction. Marcy touts the "normal" solar systems but the published data so far shows that they're few. And whare are the many 3 to 10 year Jupiter class planets that should have been announced by now? Statistically they're far fewer than the many star huggers.
Hey, did Kepler get slipped back a year or so (2007) or is my memory flawed?

-philw