The world of online search algorithms is a dynamic beast, to say the least. That’s why it’s nice that there are tools out there like WebCEO to keep track of how your sites are performing in the search engines. Basically, such a program will go out as if it were a web surfer and virtually type in keywords in the searches on your behalf. They then tell you how far down the list you are on those keywords.

This is useful, not just to see if you can expect some increased traffic, but to see what actions have what affect on your site. For example, my pagerank just went from 0 to 4 on my Brian Regan fan site (rare, but it happens apparently). I saw that it started ranking better on the term “Brian Regan” on MSN as well. Does MSN care about Google’s ranking system? Maybe.

I also submitted the site to dmoz, an open community directory. But I don’t think it could have posted in time to have such a quick effect. This leads me to conclude (not a conclusive conclusion, methinks) that MSN at least lightly weighs Google’s PageRank system. Not surprising that they’d try and take something back from a company that’s taken so much from them.