Referrals From MSN

But can't find it myself

[Tiebreaker]

Hi

My google analytics is showing me lots of referrals from MSN/Live for a certain keyword - but when I go to MSN and search myself, my site appears nowhere.

I suspect this may be some kind of geo targeting - the keyword in question is the name of a US city - and I am based in the UK.

I'm assuming that US users are seeing different results than I am - is there any way I can see the results that US searchers are seeing?

[robzilla]

Try adding &mkt=en-US to the URL of the SERP.

[Tiebreaker]

That doesn't help - but strangely, I am now starting to appear with a normal search (after a week of trying).

If I search with 2 keywords (city name plus state) I show up on the first page - but if I just search on city name, nothing comes up.

This is despite the fact that Analytics shows more referrals from city name on its own than from city + state.

[Receptional Andy]

You maybe seeing the fake referral traffic that Microsoft have been sending for years. The most recent thread on this is below:

MSN fakes referrers [webmasterworld.com]

If so, the visitor's IP will match microsoft.com.

[Tiebreaker]

Interesting ...

I think my referrals are real though - since adsense is showing increased clicks and earnings since I noticed the referrals.

And I AM showing up for city plus state searches now - which suggests to me that the city name referrals are probably real too - I just can't see it in the results myself

[robzilla]

Could be a coincidence. Did you check the IPs? You could also have a look at the average number of pageviews per visitor for these hits (the bot visits only a single page per session).

Alternatively, they might be slowly rolling out an update to their search algorithm, so you won't be seeing new results until it has fully propagated. I have not seen any reports regarding an update, though. You could also try a rank checker, ask someone in the US to perform the search for you and report back, or use a US-based proxy.

[hallandnash]

Yeah I've seen some weird things with MSN Live's referrers lately as well. It seems to only be showing 1 keyword for a multi-keyword query.

For example this is the query that comes to me:

[search.live.com...]

The user lands here:

[pmpperfumes.com...]

Obviously Klein is not the fully query that the user typed in.

MSN seems to be ok though as I got this one as well
[search.msn.com...]

I cannot seem to be reproduced this myself as multi words show when I do the query manually myself.

Anyone else see this type of thing?

[hallandnash]

actually after looking at a couple IPS (65.55.109.155 and 65.55.109.124) they resolve to MSN .. so it must be the bot spam indeed..

what's weird that I'm getting the referrer by javascript so it must be coming in that way

[koan]

I thought this crap would end with Bing, but it's still going on. MSFT, can you please stop spamming our logs?