tedster - 11:52 pm on Nov 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

As others have already said, Google is much more sensitive in the area of links - both inbound links from other domains and those within the site. Yes, Yahoo and MSN look at links, but they are not so close to the "heart" of the algo, and so Google is much more protective of their link information. They watch over link profiles and anchor text much more closely.

For example, overuse of keywords in anchor text, even within the site itself, can hurt you on Google long before it does on Yahoo or MSN. Only Ask.com is arguably more sensitive to link manipulation - and even though their SERPs re not much of a target for traffic right now, Ask still won't even offer the public a link: operator, not even a strongly limited one like Google does.

Google also has some very interesting things going on, trying to make the algo do all the heavy lifting and still be scalable far into the future. These two patents can offer up some interesting factors on a close study:

History and Age Data [webmasterworld.com] - the 2005 patent
Human Editorial Input [webmasterworld.com] - the 2006 patent