Sphinn - Microsoft: Back Off My AdSense... NOW!

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: November 14, 2007 - 1:46 am
Posted By: eKstreme 334 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com)
Category: Microsoft Searching

So it looks like now in addition to screwing with our traffic reporting, MSN could potentially be damaging our AdSense earnings.

13 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from SamIWas 334 days ago #

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I think adsense is actually the least of worries. Imagine all those advertisers paying for msn bot related clicks!! Hang on, does that explain Google's jump in quarterly earnings? :)

from drmadcow 334 days ago #

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Well its not doing any clicks thats the exact issue. Its increasing your pageviews, without clicking. Next weekend I'll probably just write an adsense PHP Object / Class that cloaks the ads from the Live network.

from mvandemar 334 days ago #

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Oh, and in case anyone were wondering, they are definitely disobeying Google's robots.txt located here:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/robots.txt

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /
Noindex: /

from doloreswheatly 333 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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Innofest 2007

Innominds is planning to organize its 2nd Annual Convention and Customer meet (InnoFest 2007) in Santa Clara, CA on Friday, November 16th, 2007.

The common theme of Innofest2007 is “Defining business models and partnership objectives to gear up global growth strategies for the participants in the IT ecosystem”. During the Convention Party they plan on identifying and debating fundamental issues that will shape the future of innovation and software product development in the lines of the common theme.

Innofest2007 will be attended by Innominds’ ISV customers, business partners, prospect ISVs, VCs and industry analysts. The event provides a platform that would enable the players of this ecosystem to interact. It will be an opportunity for you to meet your peer community and learn from their business practices, potential partners, funding houses who may be interested in your products and analysts who may want to write about you in their features.

http://innofest2007.blogspot.com

from mvandemar 333 days ago #

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Is there no way to report comment spam?

from lasellers 333 days ago #

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@drmadcow: Yea. I like mentioned in the other article, the funny thing about this is MS's practice here is probably INCREASING the occurance of cloaking. ;-)

from IncrediBILL 333 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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OK, thanks for reporting MSN nonsense hysteria.

MSN doesn't run javascript, and even if it did Google would block and/or discount the source in AdSense. Therefore, MSN increasing your page count in your web stats has absolutely nothing to do with your AdSense stats.

from mvandemar 333 days ago #

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@IncrediBILL - thank you for contributing your incredibly uninformed opinion without actually researching anything.

All AdSense is downloaded from the same url:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js

The only way that Google knows who to credit the impression with is by the Javascript variable that is passed in when the code is processed, a variable contained within tags, that looks like this:

google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";

This is why your AdSense code will generate an impression, and clicks from it will count, when someone views or clicks on your AdSense that is shown in the cached version of your pages. This code is used in the dynamic creation of an iframe, in which the AdSense ads are actually displayed. It is the demand to create this iframe that triggers a visit from the AdSense Bot Fairy, so it can know what kind of ads to display.

No Javascript = No AdSense Bot Fairy.

from IncrediBILL 333 days ago #

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@mvandemar - my opinion is completely researched and you just restated what I said with a lot more words while saying I'm wrong yet completely agreeing, amazing.

I said the MSN bot doesn't run javascript which means "No Javascript = No AdSense Bot Fairy"

from mvandemar 332 days ago #

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Well, Bill, then the lack of research would be you not actually reading the post then. I showed where that was in fact happening, and can do so again. Or, you can look for yourself.

Look through the monthly log files for a site that has AdSense on it. Open the files in a text editor that can handle large text file, something such as NoteTab Light. Look for visits from the ip range of 65.55.165.*, and immediately following each of those visits you will in fact see the Mediapartners-Google bot following along hitting the same page, demonstrating that the Javascript was, in fact, processed. Amazing indeed.

It will look a lot link this:

http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/images/MSN-spam-log-snippet.txt

from IncrediBILL 332 days ago #

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Sorry, I see why we're having a disconnect as I couldn't tell in this instance if those IPs from MS pulled up AdSense or not. My sites all have bot blockers installed so the activity from 65.55.165.* is recorded, that much I was well aware, but no physical access to my web pages happened therefore they couldn't invoke my AdSense code if in fact their bot was capable of running javascript.

However, I did discuss a similar issue with the AdSenseAdvisor on WMW a while back over major websites like Ask and Snap making screenshots which showed AdSense ads in those screen shots as potentially driving up impressions and causing other related issues. The AdSenseAdvisor claimed they were aware of those screen shots and the impressions were being discounted from known sources, which would make me believe that they would discount hits from MS as well.

Who knows, write to your AdSense rep and ask them for clarification on this point.

Worse case, just block that MS IP range and forget about it.

from mvandemar 332 days ago #

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@Bill - well, in my case I did block the bot, but I cannot block it from Google (only Google can do that), and for some reason it looks like still processed the scripts even after the bot was blocked, almost like it was processing cached info.

Besides, just protecting myself doesn't help anyone else.

Are you sure your bot blocker is blocking this bot, btw? The bot does not in any way shape or form identify itself, and looks exactly like a web browser (IE7 in fact), and doesn't even follow regular bot patterns. It ignores robots.txt and downloads css and js files. Your blocker might not know the difference. You pretty much have to know about it beforehand and add it yourself to the list of IP's to block.

from IncrediBILL 332 days ago #

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My bot blocker is real-time interactive and profiles activity and blocks based on many criteria (my 11 secret herbs and spices) so hiding as MSIE 6 or 7 won't let you crawl my site for more than a few pages. I know it blocked their bot because I searched for the IP range and found records that the bot didn't answer the challenge and quarantined the IPs as sources of bot activity.