Sphinn - Fake Referer MSN Bot is Violating my Site

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Sphinn It!

Fake Referer MSN Bot is Violating my Site

Posted By: Noobliminal 650 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Microsoft SEO

I get about 100 hits almost every hour only on one word searches from MSN. I know it's a (Quality-Control) bot (as they say) but how have you dealt with this peace of sheet that is messing up our access logs?
PS: Maybe an MSN ethically-challenged coder/representative is here to notice this thread and go shoot himself.

6 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from Sebastian 650 days ago #

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from Noobliminal 650 days ago #

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I get one word searches for very popular terms mentioned at least once on my site.

And I do not understand their idea. The IPs can be tracked to them so cloaking is way too easy. It's just stupid and sending 100s / hour is insulting. And they say if you block them you get banned. I'm taking this option into consideration.

I have a theory: they try to trick gullible webmasters into believing they get a lot of MSN traffic. The webmaster actually starts to believe MSN is used by people and ends up advertising there :)

from Sebastian 650 days ago #

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Whatever the intention is, it's implementation isevil.

from HamletBatista 650 days ago #

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This sounds like a very stupy, ill intended, idea on MSN part.

from Noobliminal 650 days ago #

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Indeed stupid is the word. I think, if this is trully an attempt to catch cloakers :)____), that is by far the most pathetic one ever. Sending only 1word searches and with exact format is childish for the least said.

Simulate a Google visitor with keyphrases (not keywords) and you might stand a better chance of noticing anything fishy. I'm really considering locking them out as traffic from them is neglectable and they just eat resources. Maybe they'll fix something by the end of the year, as they brag.

PS: Are we the only hit by them?:)

from TimDineen 650 days ago #

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This is pretty widespread. I'm actually getting a lot of traffic to my site since I rank high for discussing this - I also sphunn it a few weeks ago, here is my post http://www.exposureonline.com/2007/09/Microsoft-is-lying-and-screwing-up-your-log-files.cfm and sphinn http://sphinn.com/story.php?id=5136

I actually was going to post a follow up to that, since I had a really interesting "referral" this week, but I guess I'll just post that here.

I think Microsoft is screwing with me. I assume that they read my post here or on my actual site, and they just sent me this referral: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=sphinn&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP

Note "Sphinn" as the search term? I also know that this hit came from a Microsoft IP address.

Of course, I still get some refs with generic terms too, but I was surprised they threw that one in. I figure someone is messing with me now.