WassUp Forums

• Forums
• WassUp

1. 

   hess411
   Member

   When I go through my visitor logs looking for the keywords that were used to get to my site and clickthrough the link to see my search result, I've found the information in the visitor logs to be very accurate for Google and Yahoo!. However, for Windows Live, it's not accurate at all. For example, in the visitor logs, it tells me that my site is on page one in Windows Live COM for "google". That would be nice, but it's not true. There are a bunch of other one word key words (Wisconsin, Mccain, everyone) that WassUp also claims I am on page one for.

   What's causing this? It only seems to affect Windows Live COM

   Great tool by the way! Thanks.

   Posted 3 years ago #
2. 

   helene
   Moderator

   I also noticed the same thing on my site. A little investigation, showed that these "fake searches" all have the same platform (Win2003/IE7) and originate from the same domain (phx.gbl). That domain is the property of Microsoft.

   I have concluded that these "searches" are the result of an automated "tagging" process done by Microsoft's search engine bot. The program does not identify itself as a robot, so WassUp does not report it as one. Though it may skew the top ten search numbers a bit, it is probably a good thing that the MSN search engine bot has "tagged" your site with the indicated search term.

   FYI. Real MSN searches are referred from "search.msn.com" and from "search.live.com" where the hostname domain is NOT "phx.gbl" and those are accurate.

   -Helene D.
   http://techfromhel.webege.com

   Posted 3 years ago #
3. 

   hess411
   Member

   This is the info I got for a search for "video" in my log:

   Referrer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=video&form=QBHP
   Hostname: 65.55.110.10

   This for "everyone"

   Referrer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=everyone&form=QBHP
   Hostname: 65.55.109.196

   This doesn't seem to match with your theory though.

   JMR

   Posted 3 years ago #
4. 

   helene
   Moderator

   Actually Hess, it does match my theory. Look at the "Who is" results for 65.55.110.10. The IP belongs to Microsoft and the net range includes your "everyone" live search address as well.

   Your WHOIS Search Results
   65.55.110.10
   Record Type: IP Address

   OrgName: Microsoft Corp
   OrgID: MSFT
   Address: One Microsoft Way
   City: Redmond
   StateProv: WA
   PostalCode: 98052
   Country: US

   NetRange: 65.52.0.0 - 65.55.255.255
   CIDR: 65.52.0.0/14
   NetName: MICROSOFT-1BLK
   NetHandle: NET-65-52-0-0-1
   Parent: NET-65-0-0-0-0
   NetType: Direct Assignment
   NameServer: NS1.MSFT.NET
   NameServer: NS5.MSFT.NET
   NameServer: NS2.MSFT.NET
   NameServer: NS3.MSFT.NET
   NameServer: NS4.MSFT.NET
   Comment:
   RegDate: 2001-02-14
   Updated: 2004-12-09

   If the search was done by a person, the IP would be from an ISP provider. If it were referrer spam, the IP would likely originate from a foreign country such as Brazil or China. These "searches" come directly from Microsoft and are likely caused by a bot parsing your site for MSN search engine indexing.

   Unfortunately, WassUp cannot weed out these "bots" from the rest of the searches easily. So we're going to have to put up with them until Microsoft changes the associated "user agent" information.

   Posted 3 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.