msn referrer

[leoo24]

hey guys:)

looking at my logs I see referrals from msn live, but when i follow the referral to the results page at msn i don't see my site / page anywhere in those results

for example the referrer being

[search.live.com...]

i'm using "hosting" as an example, now if someone got to my site via that referral i should see my site in the results shouldn't i?

cheers :)

[Samizdata]

I would check out the IP address that is making the requests.

On my sites they are almost always from Microsoft.

Very few humans use Live Search.

...

[dstiles]

Get loads of those, all from MS IPs associated with msnbot and all using more or less standard browser UAs. Been going on for months.

They're a pain but possibly serve a purpose. Google and Yahoo do something similar. I assume something has to provide genuine cache images of a site and need to use a proper browser to grab css etc in context.

Alternatively, since they've refined the refer from the original totally irrelevant garbage to something approximating the site's content perhaps there is some index refining going on. Or, being MS, perhaps they've just let the apprentices loose in the playground. :)

[robzilla]

See: Odd search referrals from Live [webmasterworld.com].

[leoo24]

thanks guys :)

that link clears it up.

I wonder why though for the last three months i've had the same referral for the same highly competitive keyword? why not a variation?