grelmar - 9:47 pm on Jan 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

<<What about the link text, both in backlinks and your internal linking structure?>>

I can answer that pretty quickly:

Internal linking: The keyphrase in question is not used in any internal link. Period

Backlinks: MSN is only registering 32 backlinks at the moment (kinda funny, because Yahoo and Google are both reporting hundreds) - I found the keyphrase in question in exactly 2 of the backlinks.

I've been watching this thread since I first posted, but didn't want to jump on every post to answer it. here's a note or two on what's been questioned before:

META: People seem to be of two sides on this one, and for now, I'm going to stay on the "Meta makes a difference in MSN" side - For one, the description for the site when the search comes up is the same as from the "Meta name="description" tag. Any time I've see a SE use the meta description tag, I've seen some evidence that that SE is taking META into consideration in one way, shape, or form. As for MSN, it might not be as heavily considered as I first thought, but in all likelyhood, it's at the very least a "tie-breaker" consideration. All else being equal, the site with the meta is gonna win vs. the site that doesn't.

Old and Established vs. New Site: I haven't seen any disagreement on this, just concurrance. This might be the single biggest lesson to take away from this. The MSN database is new, so at least for the moment, the newcomers aren't facing the daunting task of going up against entrenched sites. Personally, I view this as a good thing. There are many, MANY old and established sites out there that are doing well in the other SEs, when there are newer sites in the same category that are beating the pants off them for relevance.