It means they no longer show on your credit report. Inquires only are counted in your credit score for the first 12 months. They still show on your report for 24 months. Even though FICO does not count inquiries older than 12 months, creditors may, and other FAKO credit scores such as Vantage and others may factor inquires into your score.

Inquires are not a big factor in your score. I think the most you can lose based on inquires is 20 points (say you had six inquires made today). It depends on what scorecard you are on. I believe there are something like 12 FICO scorecards. The different FICO scorecards weigh things a little differently. That's one reason you will see folks argue about how much impact an action has is because actions have different impacts for different people.

Inquires count against you more in the first 3 months, then less so for the 3-6 month period, then hardly at all from 6-12 months, then not at all after that.

The only way that inquires really hurt you is when some creditors will only approve you with less than some number of inquiries. Nordstrom Bank is one that has a reputation for this, wanting no more than two inquires on your Equifax report when they pull it. Other creditors don't seem to care if you have up to 6. Some don't appear to factor inquiries at all.

You can find a ton of information about this kind of thing on the forums at myfico.com
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Unde...-p/ficoscoring

You can put on your white lab coat and experiment with the estimated effect changes on your credit report will have on your score.
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/...alculator.aspx

Here are the basics of FICO scoring:
http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducatio...YourScore.aspx