MSN is very fast, but Microsoft's income isn't based upon the success of their search engine like Google and Yahoo!. Their software is their mainstay.

It is also a matter of prevailing attitudes and marketing. Google and Yahoo are (currently) the golden children of search engines. So were IBM, Digital, Apple, Netscape and scores of others. But the trend is avant garde and wishes to award entrepeneurs and IPOs rather than long-term industry giants. It is always that way.

The only reason you are not getting traffic is because people aren't using MSN to search, period, even though it's embedded in their browsers. It won't stay that way, but I know you can't wait for the social attitude to change in order to realize better SEO results so optimize for everybody else in the mean time.

MSN is an 800 pound gorilla laying in the weeds.

PS: IBM, Digital and Apple never tied to produce or run SEs themselves, they are just post partum victims. But InfoSeek, AltaVista, Meta-this, Meta-that, etc...certainly qualify. AOL is "enhanced", Overture sold out and everything is volitile. In the mean time I expect all of my sites to rise to the top position in MSN about four years after I'm dead.