MSN Live Sending Odd Referrals -- QBHP -- to Websites

Jul 24, 2008 - 9:51 am 6 by
Filed Under Bing Search

Six months ago, we reported that Microsoft Live Search was sending spammy types of referrals. Rogerd reports on WebmasterWorld that he's not seeing the same types of referrals we reported back in January, but he's finding some even stranger ones. For example, he saw a search for "computers" and this is a term he doesn't even rank for.

Other forum members report similar suspicious activity. As robzilla says, all hits have a referring URL that includes the variable "form=QBHP". After analyzing his logs, he says that the user agent is consistent across the board: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)".

Is this another spam or quality check? We've yet to find out.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 23, 2026

Jan 23, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Double Heated, Personal Intelligence in AI Mode, ChatGPT Ads & Apple Siri Updates Coming

Jan 23, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google

Google Search Gains Personal Intelligence In AI Mode

Jan 23, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Falls Back To Featured Snippets When AI Overviews Don't Generate

Jan 23, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads PMax Asset Group Editing Bug

Jan 23, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Gemini Local Results Insights Into How Google Interprets Your Business

Jan 23, 2026 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google Launches Knol: Project Wikipedia