If you take a look at the first javascript loaded into a search
results page on search.msn.com (live.js) you will see that they have
writen the script to intercept the clicks on the page and are sending
a ping to themselves prior to sending the client on to the next page.

I wont describe the whole script as it is quite lengthy but the end
result of their code is that the javascript is what is sending the
client on to the next page via:

window.location = _pendingAddress;

Browsers will not pass a referrer value if javascript is employed as
the mechanism for moving from one page to the next.

They built their application in a way that the referrer will no
longer pass. It may not be intentional but it is certainly
detrimental to the web community as a whole and I would think their
own sales effort as it is no longer possible to accurately see how
much traffic they are sending to your site. There are obviously still
some ways the referrer is passing so the script needs some more
thorough evaluation for what those circumstances are. What I see in
it in general terms tells me most anything coming from the search
results page (especially the organic listings) should not pass a
referrer unless the browser has javascript disabled.

This seems like something to me where the WAA should help lobby MSN
to find out why they would implement a change that so drastically
limits the site owner's ability to see what benefit MSN search provides.

-Ian



On Sep 18, 2006, at 1:02 PM, Jodi McDermott wrote:

> Mathieu,
>
> When you say that the regular expressions on your search engine
> software are
> not updated, are you referring to the internal web analytics
> software that
> you are using? Looking at the requests completely outside of the web
> analytics solution, but through live HTTP headers in Firefox, the
> referrer
> field is completely empty when following a search through MSN and
> onto our
> site.
>
> Our web analytics tool is quite robust and can be modified to parse
> any
> referrer query strings - if present. However when the field is
> completely
> empty, there is nothing to parse.
>
> Has anyone read any comments back to MSN on how this is affecting
> other
> advertisers? We do a lot of ppc on MSN and can modify our analysis
> to parse
> the campaign id, but this does not solve the issue with organic
> search and
> seeing what people are searching on.
>
> Jodi
>
> On 9/18/06, Mathieu Jondet <mathieu@...> wrote:
>>
>> Debora Geary wrote:
>>> Anyone else noticing this with their MSN traffic? As of last
>>> Thursday, several of my clients saw a drop of 70-90%+ in their MSN
>>> traffic. At the same time, there was a similarly sized increase
>>> in "no referrer" traffic.
>>>
>>> We first noticed this with one of my clients gets who about 50,000
>>> visitors a day. We've confirmed that SERPs haven't changed, and the
>>> traffic that does show up is using the same types of searches as
>>> usual. (In one
>>> of those bizarre web analytics moments, this client happens to have
>>> changed to a new server last Wednesday, so we went down the garden
>>> path with this one until I realized several other clients were
>>> showing
>>> the same pattern).
>>>
>>> The only thing I can figure is that this might have something to do
>>> with MSN changing to Live Search last week
>>> http://livesearch.spaces.live.com/blog/cns%218560B877FE8E9138%
>>> <http://livesearch.spaces.live.com/blog/cns%218560B877FE8E9138%25>
>>> 21608.entry ?
>>
>> Hi Deborah,
>> seeing the same thing here, the trafic is going in
>> 'beta.search.live.com ', for all related MSN searches,
>> http://search.msn.com redirecting to http://www.live.com wich then
>> use
>> the http://beta.search.live.com domain for displaying SERP.
>> Clicking on a result will set the referer to
>>
>> http://beta.search.live.com/results.aspx?q=web+analytics&mkt=en-
>> US&form=QBRE&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search
>>
>> So this means the matching regular expressions for search
>> engines in
>> the software you are using have not been updated yet.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mathieu
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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