MSN Search Engine Favors IIS

Scud writes "It appears that if you want to rise up in the rankings over at the MSN search engine you would do well to host your page on IIS. Ivor Hewitt has done a study and it appears that by using IIS, you are likely to increase your odds of a higher listing by several percent."

Gee...

[FlyByPC]

...such anticompetitive behavior from Microsoft?!? Wow. Who'da thunk it?

IE bias too

[akadruid]

It's clearly biased towards Internet Explorer too, the results I get back in Firefox are mostly irrelevant blogs and pages full of adverts.

Top MSN Rankings

[bigtallmofo]

Is there any truth to the rumor that having a picture of Bill Gates on your site makes you #1 in your category?

No bias

[Anonymous Coward]

It just happens that people use "is" a lot in their search queries. Perhaps Apache should rename itself to "The Apache."

That's odd...

[w0lver]

It's really unlike MS to skew things towards their products... I'm sure it's a mistake or a "Linux Zealots" distorting the facts...

You're kidding me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has its own search engine? When did this happen? This is the first I heard of it. I have never heard one of my friends say, "Hey just MSN Search it!"

Re:Why would i want to do that?

[JadeNB]

1. Why would i want to improve my rankings at an "unknown", "unworthy", "bug-ridden", "slow" search engine?

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of Microsoft *, Gates is muttering to himself `640K of valid search results should be enough for anyone.'

* Sorry for that image.

I'm shocked, shocked!

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

This is the most shocking news I've heard since I found out Pro Wrestling was fake!

- Crow T. Trollbot

Microsoft products biased towards Microsoft!

[rdmiller3]

and this is "news", why?

evil

[hey]

Well, MSN never promised they wouldn't be evil.
So it seems fair to me.

That's easy enough to fix

[speters]

Just change the server response line if the GET or POST comes from Redmond, WA to say you are some version of IIS. I can already see the recommendations coming from the SEO folks.

"Try the New MSN Search Engine Today.."

[Zemplar]

"...Suggesting crappy Microsoft based products to Idiots of Tomorrow, Today!"

I'm going to block MSN spider

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a technical websites with lots of visitors. I don't need MSN. I'm going to block MSN spider from my website to make MSN much more inferiour. Everyone should do this.

Re:It all makes sense...

[SComps]

*gasp* Slashdot runs on IIS?!?

this revelation before lunch?

Re:Just have your Apache report that it is IIS !

[youngerpants]

would you mind letting us know how this is done? I could just MSN it, but nothing comes up ;)

I've never...

[n6kuy]

...Googled for anything using MSN!

Re:Silly, silly boys (and girls)

[Binestar]

And then you would also need to move it _back_ to Apache to see if the ranking declines again.

I thought moving it back to apache would be the natural thing to do after running a webpage on IIS for a short while... *shudder*

From the desk of Bill Gates

[PenguinBoyDave]

Dear Microsoft Employees: It has come to my attention that some of you are under the impression that there is another web server other than IIS. Please know this is not true. It is about as silly as this rumor that there is another browser besides Internet Exploder and another email program besides Outlook and Outlook Express. The EVIL Linux / Open Source movement has it out for us. However, upon review of the data collect from our super-worm, it appears that Linux and Open Source may too be a big hoax. We can find no evidence that either one exists. So, please continue on making your software as insecure and unstable as possible. Our marketing records indicate that such "features" such as the "Blue Screen of Death" actually cause people up upgrade their older versions of Windows to our newer, more intrusive versions. Thank you for your hard work. Until we rule the world, Bill Gates

Re:it's foolish...

[Standmic]

Even if M$'s search engine did not appear evil at all, I would still suspect something just because it is M$.

The funny part

[afstanton]

is when all the extra traffic from higher rankings crashes the IIS servers that much faster!

Re:Top MSN Rankings

[stretch0611]

Is there any truth to the rumor that having a picture of Bill Gates on your site makes you #1 in your category?

Only if the picture does not include, targets, crosshairs, or cream pie. [bitstorm.org]

Re:Just have your Apache report that it is IIS !

[misleb]

As a bonus, it also becomes a honeypot!

-matthew

Re:Mirror site:

[Qzukk]

But is the mirror running on apache or IIS?

Re:That's odd...

[Daravon]

Oh, you missed the memo. According to Microsoft sometimes Open Source is good. Linux is always bad.

Re:MSN finds more "linux" hits than Google!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I quick search for "linux" indeed confirms the ordering assertion made for this example for the search engines. But what is more interesting is that Google found about 299 million hits, where as MSN found over 336 million hits. I say,

Be aware that 37 million of those hits are "Why Windows is better than Linux" reports generated by Microsoft's very own AutoShill(TM) software.

Re:I'm shocked, shocked!

[doublem]

It's fake!?!?!?!?!

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is irrelevant for most websites

[MarkusQ]

The control over what webserver you will use is typically limited by your hosting provider. While many provide the choice between Unix-based servers and Windows-based servers, many do not.

Have they gone ahead and implemented that thing about assigning you a hosting provider at birth then? What a shame. Back in my day, we used to be able to pick our hosting provider based on what they provided and what they charged for it.

Ah, the good ol' 1900's.

--MarkusQ

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit! You redefined conspiracy in a manner to make it meaningless in the context it is being discussed. What a rhetorical master you are!

Makes sense

[Sloppy]

Think of it as "social proof" -- if a website occasionally becomes unresponsive every once in a while (perhaps due to a slashdotting), then it must be very popular, so it's probably the one you want.

It's just coincidence that there happens to be a bias that makes IIS-hosted sites measure higher by this metric. ;-)

Re:FTFA

[Reignking]

I thought that "undocumented features" was a euphemism for "bug"? :)

Re:insidious internet server

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many words, you could have just said

OMG!!! M$ IS TEH GHAY!!!

MSN loves me

[Shadarr]

My site is a webcomic/rant site that uses some fairly... colourful language. Apparently MSN search has a porn filter, so we get all sorts of traffic from porn searches that didn't turn up any porn. In fact, MSN search is our number 2 referer, beating out every marketing campaign we've ever done.

If you search MSN for things like "anal fucker", "hardcore sites", or "why is leah remini fat now" there's a good chance UAC [uacomic.com] will be right there on the first page. And our site is PHP and Apache all the way.