When MSN launched its new engine, the larger sites we manage saw a significant rise in popularity. BUT...it's not due to "incoming links" from referrer sites. It appears - in our case - that it is purely internal to MSN.

In other words, the number of people clicking through from the MSN directory itself seems to outweigh any third-party affiliation links on the Net. We do not have, nor do we solicit, large numbers of external sites pointing to specific domains. Yet we are popular to the extreme in some cases without ever being listed on a single "link farm" or associate group of sites.

To tell you the truth, I think external links are sometimes as overrated as Meta Keywords. Pure content is, in my view, always the determiner in any algorythm because the SEs know it is the bottom line to their success