What links matter?

How can you tell the weight of pages or of links that help you? Other than trying to figure out all the variables (importance of page, relevance of page, number of links on that page, body text vs advertisement, reciprocal links etc etc), is there a short-cut to finding out which links the search engines treat as the most important? Here is an analysis of the first dozen links reported in the search engine. Link count: google 70, Yahoo 651. MSN 6489.

BTW - I use marketleap.com as a metaway to count links to my site. I did just run across the most amazing set of tools at: http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/

Google - There is the page rank system. Does the order in which sites come up when you google the sitename suggest which links are weighing most heavily? What if I use the mysterious google search on: link:http://www.Time4Learning.com, do the results of that search indicate which links are helping me the most? By the way, google list me as having a 6 page rank on my home page, 5 or 4 on most other pages. They report 70 links to my site and while their list of 70 has changed a few times in the past six months, the 70 number has not. Go figure.

MSN - Reports that I have 6,489 links. It seems to report some of the newest ones first but then, also some of the ones that correspond to google's PR system rank high.

Yahoo - 651 links is what they report for http://www.time4Learning.com.

Lets compare the first dozen links reported in each search engine's report on links to see what we can find.....

reporting engine results for G M Y - Looking at order....

developerdispatch.com 1stY 4thMSN - a new single link on a 6PR site...
time4learning.com 1st-3rdG 16th-17thG 2ndY 2ndMSN 11thMSN - these are internal links
KlamathDesign 3rdY 5thMSN 13thMSN - multiple links, a weblog on a .com domain, some PR ~3 ?
carolhurst.com 4thY 8thY 6-7thMSN - multiple links, PR of 6
feedingbroward.org 7thG 5thY 3rdMSN - multiple links, PR5
lifelearningmagazine.com 6thY 9thMSN 17thMSN
teachers.net 7thY
todays-learners.com 8th-9thG 9thY - many many links
inspirebrilliance.com 10thY
greatschools.net 4thG
www.learning-fun.blogspot.com/2005/07/new-school-year.html 5thG , 12-13thG 12thMSN - many many links
children-online.org/Frames/resources.html 6thG
familyhomeschoolingonline.com 10thG
autodidacts.com 11thG
profiles.yahoo.com/johnedelson 14thG
greatschools.net 15thG
fastcharge.com 1stMSN
homeschoolmath.blogspot.com 8thMSN
reading-skills-pyramid.org 10thMSN
homeschool.lindajomartin.com 14thMSN
homeschoolmath.net 15thMSN
nfahm.blogspot.com 16thMSN (andrea hermitt)
homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/methods/DLPsCyberschools.htm 17thMSN

Does the order of these list signify anything?
Does the fact that the Press releases don't show up signify anything?
Does the fact that some newer links show up early signify anything?
Does the fact that the blogs are listed up high signify anything?

Google links
Yahoo Search Results - 11/20/2005
MSN links - 11/20/2005