MSN and IIS

MSN seems to favor IIS sites

[volatilegx]

According to this study [ivor.it], MSN seems to favor IIS sites in its rankings, compared to Google SERPs.

[mack]

That is one heck of a lot of data, Nice find.

Mack.

[Receptional]

Kudos to winglian for finding this. Be warned - I have decided to allow the link because the findings are interesting and it would be very interesting if others can back up this research. But if I hear gratuitous Bill bashing or ill informed comment (or any more links that I don't know are independednt) I may be a little heavy handed on this thread :)

My main question is the size of the dataset. Small datasets can be misleading on this sort of analysis.

[encyclo]

Is it that MSN favors sites running on IIS, or is it that MSN favors the kind of sites which run on IIS? For example, if you look at the webserver software run by the sites of major Fortune 500 companies, IIS has a much larger market share than the Netcraft survey implies.

Why would we want to bash bill [webmasterworld.com]?!

[volatilegx]

> MSN favors the kind of sites which run on IIS

Let's ask these questions: Are more spammy sites running on IIS or Apache? I'd guess Apache.

Does that mean MSN has eliminated a greater percentage of Apache based sites from their index than IIS sites because the Apache sites were spammier?

What does this mean for Google and Yahoo?

[encyclo]

Are more spammy sites running on IIS or Apache? I'd guess Apache.

Or more generally that Apache dominates the shared hosting space. The following is empirical evidence: IIS servers are more often dedicated servers, more often with a dedicated IP address, more often hosting larger sites, more often dynamic sites (ASP or ASP.NET), more often commercial/"industry" sites (vs. personal).

So I would guess that the fact that MSN favors IIS servers because their algo favors sites which fit into the above mold. It would certainly make a lot more sense than any conspiracy theory.

[JeremyL]

I would agree that a larger percentage of spammy sites tend to run apache. My theory behind that has to do with *nix/apache hosting can be found very cheap in a multite of places. It is much harder to find good, reliable, cheap IIS hosting. When you are running hundreds, or thousands of different spam sites, needing them spread accross many C class IP ranges, hosting costs can eat you alive and every dollar counts.

But that said, I do not think that reducing spam in any way has anything to do with MSN favoring IIS if they do.

[winglian]

My thought is that people who might develop websites on the "IIS platform" might have a tendency to think similar to those at Microsoft, thus whatever microsoft/MSN thinks is beneficial is inline with what the IIS web site developers are using. Of course this is all skecpticism.