is microsoft using referer spam?
Well, this is interesting.
Being the good web nerd, blog stats fanatic that I am, I check in a couple times a day to the different web analytics programs I have set up for the site. i’ve been toying with slimstat, google analytics, and the Wordpress.com stats plugin. Each has its own benefits, but that isn;t what this post is about.
I saw a curious referer from a search for “infiniti” from live.com
But i knew right away… I don’t write about cars on my blog.
Even more interesting is that the request came from an ip address @ Microsoft.
Now, it would really be silly if Microsoft thought it was a good idea to referer spam blogs like mine aspiring to make it to the c-list blogger tier in order to drive traffic to search.live.com, wouldn’t it? I wonder if text ads for “infiniti” cost much these days?
I can’t really explain how the referer happened, since the term “infiniti” hasn’t been on the site until now.
Here is a snip from the logfile:
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:12 -0700] “GET /wp-content/themes/sandbox/skins/bluno.css HTTP/1.1″ 200 2929 “http://www.bluno.org/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:12 -0700] “GET / HTTP/1.1″ 200 37905 “http://search.live.com/result.aspx?q=infiniti&mrt=en-us&FORM=LVSP” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:12 -0700] “GET /wp-content/plugins/audio-player/audio-player.js HTTP/1.1″ 200 791 “http://www.bluno.org/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:12 -0700] “GET /wp-content/themes/sandbox/stylebluno.css HTTP/1.1″ 200 5313 “http://www.bluno.org/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:13 -0700] “GET /wp-content/plugins/falbum/falbum.css.php HTTP/1.1″ 200 15426 “http://www.bluno.org/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
131.107.0.96 - - [06/Jun/2007:21:07:13 -0700] “GET /wp-content/plugins/google-analyticator/ga_external-links.js HTTP/1.1″ 200 2281 “http://www.bluno.org/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
I mean, that would be a really dumb move on Microsoft’s part, right?
Update: hmm… a few minutes more research turns up this at webmaster world:
What happens is:
- they build an index.
- it has errors in it.
- they run a util on high value kws that flags possible problems for a hand check.
- they do the hand check and delete obvious mistakes.
I guess I can buy that, but it would be sad that their search index could be so wildly error prone.. I sure hope word doesn’t leak out about it! 
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