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MSN Search Engine Favors IIS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the kinda-surprising-i-guess dept.

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."

15 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. IE bias too by akadruid · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
  2. FTFA by Reignking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what's going on? I have no idea, I doubt it's all a big conspiracy... but some possible explanations spring to mind: Perhaps the MSN search has simply been coded by developers used to talking to IIS machines and so it just does that job better? Perhaps the MSN spider is taking advantage of some specific IIS features to provide enhanced indexing?

    In other words, there are some explanations out there other than "MS is biased and there's a conspiracy and they are trying to take over the world"...

    --
    One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
    1. Re:FTFA by .com+b4+.storm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or if that's too much work, one could also argue that Google ranks IIS down!

      The problem with that is that Google (for now?) has zip, zilch, nada, and nil to gain directly by ranking any given server up or down. Google does not distribute or sell web servers, nor have any direct stock in any particular server and its success or failure. Microsoft, on the other hand, makes a web server - and if their search engine adjusts ranking in any way based on the presence or absence of that web server, that is rather fishy.

      One could argue, of course, that Google has a stake in certain web servers (i.e. ones not controlled by companies like Microsoft) by virtue of them keeping the WWW open, and thus providing a viable arena for Google's search technology and money-making adverts. That's a bit different, though, and I'm not aware of any indication that Google favors open source web servers (or whatever) in their results.

      --
      "Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
      -- Ryan Stiles
  3. it's foolish... by hruske · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... to think ms wouldn't use all it has. Obviously it hasn't yet learned from google, that being evil is bad. And bad guys get punished.

  4. Top MSN Rankings by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
  5. I laugh at Microsoft. by the_mutha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... and they still think they can beat Google to the game. When are they going to realize that what made Google so successfull was the fact that is has been so unbiased in all ways imaginable, including not accepting payments to get higher rankings.

    Google makes money by prioritising quality. Microsoft makes money by prioritising money.

    Go figure.

  6. Not a controlled experiment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    To be conclusive, it needs to be a controlled experiment with the same text and same outgoing/incoming links.

    Just the webserver alone changing. This can happen by taking a popular site and then changing what it reports to the MSN search robots.

    But until such an experiment is done, the data is open to too many interpretations.

  7. nearly first in google not even listed in mssearch by incuso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My site is first or nearly first in google using relevant search terms. But in MSN it never shows (even if listed). Maybe also the use of PHP is harmful for MSN ranking? M.

  8. Just have your Apache report that it is IIS ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For years now, the company where I work has had all it's Apache systems reporting that they are IIS 5.0 systems. Just a quick change in a single file before compiling and there you go!

  9. I'm shocked, shocked! by Cr0w+T.+Trollbot · · Score: 5, Funny
    This is the most shocking news I've heard since I found out Pro Wrestling was fake!

    - Crow T. Trollbot

  10. A possible explanation by rabtech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most of those useless keyword, domain parking/hijacking, and spam sites out there run on Linux+Apache because the owner can host thousands of those domains fairly inexpensively, and that's the key to all spam: minimization of operating expenses so you only need 1 out of 100,000 users to click/buy to turn a profit.

    These sites don't have any real content, they just point to other sites and/or exist to spam you with advertisements. Some of them have googlebombed their way higher into the rankings.

    My guess is that MSN does a slightly better job of filtering those useless sites out of the index at the present time, OR the "googlebombing" techniques they use aren't as effective with MSN's indexing. Since they almost exclusively use Apache that would have the false appearance of favoring IIS.

    This is just a guess, but it seems plausable.

    --
    Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
  11. I've never... by n6kuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...Googled for anything using MSN!

    --
    If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
  12. Re:Would it even be worth it? by sh00z · · Score: 5, Informative
    Hre's the stats for my site, accumulated since April 1 (average 3000 unique visitors per day):
    - Google 7873
    - Yahoo 3163
    - MSN 199
    - AOL 65
    - Dogpile 44
    - Unknown 41
    - Earth Link 28
    - AltaVista 16
    - Excite 14
    - A9.com 9
    - Others 77

    ...which comes out to about 2% MSN.

  13. Re:Silly, silly boys (and girls) by Binestar · · Score: 5, Funny

    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*

    --
    Do you Gentoo!?
  14. Do we see a significant effect? Is it just chance? by davids-world.com · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sounds plausible at first, but if you look at his figures you see that the author didn't run a lot of queries, and that the difference between the google/Netcraft and the MSN ratios for Apache vs. IIS is not huge (68:20 vs 64:26).

    Leads me to think: is it significant? That is, can we exclude (to a reasonable certainty, that is, p>0.95) the possibility that the effect seen cannot be attributed to chance or some other criterion MSN uses?

    Ivor says at some point The initial set of words indeed showed a significant difference between the results from Google and the results from the Beta MSN search..

    But what does he mean? I would be interested in what kind of significance test was applied, what the exact results were. Just looking at the ratio of percentages doesn't tell me enough... One should go back at the original data (seems provided, good) and check if the effect is actually trustworthy or just, in Ivor's words, "Odd. Pure coincidence perhaps."

    Before seeing some analysis of significance, I don't believe anything...