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There are many ways to find links on the search engines.  All engines seem to have different ways to find and qualify these links.

In this article I look at MSN including it’s advanced link queries and how it too can be a valuable link building resource.

It seems like my last few articles have all been about using different search engines to find links.  So today I thought I’d continue with that tradition by looking at MSN and how you can use this engine to find authoritative links.

But first let’s take a brief look at how MSN the search engine works.

Microsoft has employed what it calls a “Neural Network” for a search engine.  And while this can mean many things, Microsoft claims that it’s Neural Network learns and improves.  That means the system can adapt itself based on user’s interactions with the search results.

For example, if the engine notices that the #3 result for a given query is picked more often than the other 2 results then it will move that result up to the #1 or #2 spot and monitor what happens.  If the click throughs drop off, it sill determine that the site performs better at #3 and will then move it back ot the original position.

The goal of the Neural Networked system is to ensure that the user gets the best experience overall.

But in Microsoft’s case they can have a distinct advantage over other engines.  This is because many people have a Hotmail or MSN account.  By tying your Microsoft account to your search history, MSN search can begin to build a profile of your search habits and then adapt itself to suit what it determines are your needs.

For example, if you spend a lot of your time on MSN performing vehicle related searches, but then search for “tires” it should be smart enough to know that you are likely looking for vehicle tires and not bicycle tires.

And while this technology seems impressive, it doesn’t really help us search engine marketers or link builders.

But that’s not to say that there isn’t opportunities in using MSN search.

For example, did you know that MSN search also has some pretty complex query builders?  In fact, if you go to search.msn.com you will see a “Search Builder” link right below the search box.  This is where you can begin to create your complex link research queries.

Now, you don’t need to use the search builder every time, but for the first time it’s handy so you can see the proper format for the query.

So let’s get into an example.

Let’s say Joe the plumber wants to research his competitors links.  We already know that you can perform a “link:joescompetitor.com” query you will see all the links MSN has found pointing to the competitor.  But did you know that you can further refine this query much like you can on Yahoo!?

That’s right, using the search builder you can further refine your query by looking for those links that have a phrase in and around them, as well as restricting the links to certain domains or TLD’s (Top Level Domains).  You can also exclude any internal domain links to come up with a true list of all external links.

That means you can use a query like “link:joescompetitor.com -site:joes.competitor.com.” this query will show all the links pointing to Joe’s competitor but aren’t from the site.  These are the true incoming links as found by MSN.

Yet there’s still more:

Let’s say you want to find out which links point to the competitor on certain key phrases.  You can further restrict your query to only include those sites built around a theme.

For example, let’s say you wanted to find all sites linking to Joe’s competitor that aren’t internal links but are from pages about “plumbing.”

You would form your query like this:

“link:joescompetitor.com -site:joes.competitor.com. plumbing”

Now if you wanted to further refine the query to only return “quality” sites, such as educational institutions or government site you can do that as well.

Again, either using the search builder or typing it in yourself you can modify the query like this:

“link:joescompetitor.com -site:joes.competitor.com. plumbing inurl:edu”

This query will return all external links to the site from universities and colleges where the page contains the phrase “plumbing” or is otherwise about plumbing.

As you can see, MSN search has some of the most powerful query building out there.  You can glean much more quality information using this engine than you can in Google simply because of this query refinement ability.

So the next time you are out researching link requests why not give MSN a try?

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article