[vox] [fwd] Is the MSN search engine being used in the battle to kill Linux?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 11:47:15AM -0700, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> Still unclear... is MSNBot searching Google, and is Google allowing those
> searches to affect article ratings? I was under the impression that Google
> ratings were based on web links found by their own bot.  Is Google's bot
> getting confused by some tarpit created by MSN's search engine?  Have you
> contacted Google (they devote a significant amount of time to identifying
> ways to prevent this type of gaming of their system).

I think MSNBot is MSN's crawler, and it sounds like he's implying it's
being used to sniff out content MS doesn't like.  In turn, it sounds like 
it looks for alternative content (in Tom's case, very old articles of his)
and propagates links to THAT content within MSN's sites, somehow (either
as search results when doing an MSN search, or...? ... I don't know, I don't
use any Microsoft websites).

That, in turn, apparently affects the pagerank of the newer content...
the stuff that, presumably, MS doesn't like.

*shrug*


<snip> 
> Hmm... Microsoft ignoring industry-standard semantics? I am boggled. ;)

Yeah, really. :^)


> > In this article, I discuss the issue. I will also post the fix we
> > discovered by accident. BTW, a standard redirect will not work.
> 
> Oh, really? Inquiring minds want to know more.  Would, perhaps, an
> appropriately-designed firewall rule do the trick?

Yeah, when I finally read to the end of the article, I didn't really
notice the aforemention solution.  The article kinda dwindled down.
(Sorry for not looking more closely before posting it here!)


<snip>
> Seriously... the tone here seems rather whiny.  He should announce the
> issue and suggest a couple of options. (And stay on topic... Sun as
> "better guy than Microsoft" in the article above is wandering a bit.)

Yeah. :^/  I had to reread a bit to make sure I didn't skip something.


Anyway, I'll shut up now. ;)

-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com                            New Breed Software
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/       Tux Paint 0.9.14 -- Coming soon!