MSN makes little sense

Anyone else noticed its a bit random recently?

[futureX]

Was recently looking through some logs and noticed a few weird keyword combos... After further looking into the source, it was MSN, the two words in the phrase appeared nowhere on the page but were in the META tags, ranked 4th, not a very competetitve keyword, but not unheard of...

Seems weird that my page would come up 4th above a lot of pages which have those keywords on the pages :/

What else would influence its rank on MSN?

[jeremy goodrich]

From the sound of it, you could either be looking at the LookSmart derived listings / or the Inktomi ones.

The INk results can be 'wacky' for lack of a better term, when just looking for those, I've seen some results that were plain bizarre a few times - but hitting refresh got it sorted, so I assumed it was just a temporary glitch.

For the directory stuff...well, MSN applies it's own algo.

To better help your question of 'what helps MSN listings' first I'll need to know which db / provider to tell you about. :)