Microsoft's share of U.S. web search shrinks
,----[ Quote ]
| The Redmond-based software giant (NASDAQ: MSFT) saw its share slip to 11.2
| percent from 12.1 percent in January.
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http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=ACBJ&date=20080326&id=8388575
That's a drop of almost 10% in just one month, despite huge investments (i.e.
huge spendings with very poor RoI... or massive losses).
It's based on yet another new survey that may have fallen victim to Microsoft's
PORN-SPAM-style gaming of referrals (details below).
Related:
Microsoft funding bankrupt Live Search experiment with porn spam
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| Dear reader, please tell me: what do you think of a search engine that steals
| (bandwidth and AdSense revenue), lies, spams away, and is not clever enough
| to stop their criminal activities when they’re caught?
|
| Recently a Live Search rep whined in an interview because so many robots.txt
| files out there block their crawler...
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http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/microsoft-live-search-the-downfall-of-a-tiny-search-engine/
Microsoft’s Club Live fiasco
,----[ Quote ]
| People were using the macro on more than 3 games at a time, on more than 2
| accounts at a time, why Microsoft didn’t pick up on the fact that in the
| first few days some people had accumulated enough for 3 Zunes each is beyond
| us. Some were lucky, others, not so much.
|
| [...]
|
| So far no one has been banned from using their accounts, which they needed to
| sign up, probably because they did not break any laws, or probably because
| Microsoft didn’t want that hassle and liked their new found traffic.
`----
http://www.blogthe.net/2007/07/16/microsofts-club-live-fiasco/
Bots Helped To Boost Microsoft Live Search Gains
,----[ Quote ]
| In a blog post, Compete analyst Steve Willis attributed Microsoft's
| search gains to prizes awarded to users participating in Live Search
| Club, which features games that post queries to Microsoft's search
| engine.
|
| [...]
|
| Microsoft is essentially being DDoSed by thousands of people hundreds
| of times per minute, but they are mistaking this rise in traffic for
| people actually using Live Search."
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http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201001092
Searching for document formats
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| I’m not sure there’s a concrete conclusion here though it is clear to me that
| Microsoft Live Search has the least useful and relevant set of links about
| ODF in the top ten beyond the Wikipedia entry. I find that odd. Perhaps they
| just have a really quirky relevance algorithm.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2143
A Pre-BRM Miscellany
,----[ Quote ]
| Google searches for "ODF" and "OpenDocument" or even "noooxml" are now
| returning sponsored links with phrases like "Learn the truth about the
| standard for interoperability" that lead you to a pro-OOXML petition on
| Microsoft's faux OOXML community site. For example, try this query.
|
| Let's see if I understand how this pay-per-click system works. Every time I
| click these sponsored links, money gets transferred out of some pro-OOXML
| supporter's bank account and is sent to Google? These seems the expensive
| route to go, but there is some logic to it. A look at Google Trends shows
| that Google queries for "ODF" far outnumber queries for "OOXML".
|
| On the other side, at the real <NO>OOXML petition, the count stands at 82,422
| signatures. Apparently they did not need to trick people into visiting their
| web site.
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http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/02/pre-brm-miscellany.html
Is Microsoft tinkering with Live Search results?
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| Is Microsoft filtering out from its Live Search results those it
| considers “undesirable” for the company?
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http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1127
|
|
