What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

Summary:

While Google ranks this website on the 2nd place after the hijacked Wikipedia page, Live.com, the by-default Microsoft search engine for users of Internet Explorer7, ranks this website at the 30th position.

What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

zoobab 11 Oct 2007 14:36

You can try to search for the term OOXML in Live.com, the by-default Microsoft search engine for customers of Internet Explorer7, it ranks this website at the 30th position (page 3):

Microsoft Live.com	Google

Why is there such huge difference between the two? Microsoft don't like this website, or their algorithms are just poor?

Last edited on 11 Oct 2007 17:25 by zoobab Show more

Re: What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

stegu 11 Oct 2007 20:04

A fun fact, but I wouldn't read too much into it. Every search engine has its own ranking algorithm. If you look at a few other popular and not-so-popular search engines they will place nooxml.org at anything from #3 (Yahoo) to around #100 (Ask.com). Random processes work like that: sometimes seemingly meaningful patterns will emerge for no reason. This is most likely just a coincidence, unless somebody can find more examples of active down-ranking of MS-critical websites at live.com.

Last edited on 11 Oct 2007 21:03 by stegu Show more

Re: What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

pieterh 16 Oct 2007 16:50

Note that "noooxml" does not return the noooxml.org homepage at all on Live.com while (obviously) it's the first hit on Google. This suggests, fairly strongly, that something is up.

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Re: What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

baltix 17 Oct 2007 06:58

So, It's almost 100% clear, that MS-critical websites are removed or at least down-ranked at live.com - I just tried to search by ooxml keyword and found, that nooxml.org is on first place ! Strange thing, right ?
But when I tried to search by pressing on link found in this post - I saw very different results, without nooxml.org :-/ Very strange, right ?
So, tried to found differences between these searches and found, that difference is default search engine language - I'm from Lithuania, so, live.com website as default is translated to Lithuanian language for me and shows completely different search results than live.com in English language !
I tested with other languages and noticed, that Microsoft filters mainly search results when language is set to English (en-us and en-gb), but not only - it seems in majority of languages (German, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, etc) nooxml.org is in first place and results count is more than 2 200 000 but in searches in some languages, at least in English US, GB and IE produces completely different results - in en-us there are only about 26 000, in en-gb - about 800 000, etc.

So, look at these searches and see how Microsoft removes microsoft-critical web pages from live.com search:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=en-us&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=en-gb&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=en-ie&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=de-de&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=pl-pl&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=lt-lt&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=ooxml&go=Search&mkt=ru-ru&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

Look at the numbers of "Web results" - in most cases results are more than 2 200 000, while in en-us - only about 26 000 !

Re: What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

stegu 18 Oct 2007 17:08

Microsoft filters mainly search results when language is set to English

Now, that is strange. It's even less likely to be malicious, though. If they were actually trying to filter out criticism, they would certainly not limit that behavior to the US and Great Britain, right?

Re: What happened with the ranking of <NO>OOXML on Live.com?

DarkPhoenixFF4 20 Nov 2007 08:26

As anyone who's ever used the built-in search of Internet Explorer (the one you get if you click on "Search" in IE6), Microsoft rigs their search engine to bring up results favorable to them. See http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/search.html :

For example, it used to be that a search for "linux" listed a tech article published by Microsoft as the #3 result, and a guide to dumping Linux for Windows as #4… pages that wouldn't have shown up anywhere near the top on less biased search services.