Are You Getting Bogus Referrals from Live.com?

[Easy_Coder]

I am, it started about a week ago. What I'm seeing is many searches for one word phrases all coming from IP Addresses that walks back to an IP block at Microsoft 65.55.165.

Here are some IPs that I'm seeing.

65.55.165.112
65.55.165.86
65.55.165.87
65.55.165.74
65.55.165.54
65.55.165.110

This appears to be folks from within Microsoft Testing and they're doing so much of it that it's really having an impact on my referral data. Not that I don't mind the referrals but these don't appear to be legitimate.

Is anyone else seeing this type of activity?

[edited by: Easy_Coder at 2:29 pm (utc) on Sep. 25, 2007]

[vincevincevince]

I think most of us have been having them.

[ogletree]

I am getting the same thing. Check the sites that do rank for those terms you might be on one of them. Somebody told me that if someone goes to a site from live.com and then clicks on a link on that site the referrer would be from live instead of the site that the link was on.

[Easy_Coder]

I wonder what they heck they're up to?

[Easy_Coder]

Really ogletree? Man, that is really sneaky if they're monkeying around with the referral data and then sending them on their way.

If that's true though my referrals from live.com have skyrocketed in the last couple of weeks to almost google levels.

[edited by: Easy_Coder at 2:49 pm (utc) on Sep. 25, 2007]

[Easy_Coder]

Well, I just tested that and it doesn't appear that referrals from search.live.com are having their referring IP Address swapped out for a Microsoft IP Address.

Can anyone else confirm that?