Does MSN have something similar to pr?

Do you think MSN have something similar to google pr? It seems to me that they do. I believe this based on the following "evidence".

When you make a search for link:somesite.com (a site in the coop will be a good test) you can see that the results are sorted in order of quality of the sites and links.

Look for example at example

First comes links to good sites homepages, then to links of less quality and so on. So, from this i have come to think that they have some sort of pr on their algo too.

What do you think about this?

 

They probably have some internal ranking scheme to be able to say X site is more relevant to this search than Y site.

 

It seems the URLS that come first have more links to them, its not about being relevant

 

I think that this kinda goes without saying. If any search engine DIDN'T have some way of sorting results, then every search would be different, even for the same terms. If I searched for "Nintendo DS", 1 search would give me Nintendo's official site at #1, then another exact same search would give me IGN's DS section.

You could even have the same site on two pages... IGNDS at #1 on page 1, and at number 14 on page 2, since when you clicked on "Next Page", it just randomly sorted them again...

 

Yes, this is the tendency that I see. Just pure brute linking power.

 

Of course MSn takes into account backlinks, in fact MSn places a lot of weight on internal links as well. the Page rank algorithm is patented, but you can bet your arse that MSN have a similar system.

 

You innovate, we assimilate.

Hasn't that been Microsoft's calling from day 1? Of course, I'm sure Yahoo has a very similar method as well.