Does Google search box enhance rank?

[charpress]

A competitor has much better ranking than my relatively new site. His site has no content and is amateurish looking.

The only thing I see about his site is that he has a Google search box (web search) right in the middle of his index page together with "search with Google, best search engine on the web" as text. Is this helping him with Google?

[pmac]

Hello Charpress, and welcome [webmasterworld.com] to Webmasterworld.
Having a Google search box will have no affect on how a site is ranked. More than likely, the site is ranking well because of quality inbound links. This forum has a wealth of information that will allow you to understand how Google scores pages, so pull up a chair and read, read, read.

[charpress]

Hehe -- All I've been doing the last couple of days is begging for quality links.

I hit #1 on my search terms for MSN today, but Google is a problem. I may have made a mistake in going with pay per click with them. We'll see.