Member Avatar for DanceInstructor

I was checking the cpanel for my website and saw this as a referer:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=western+dance&first=11&count=10&FORM=PORE

Does this mean that someone performed this search and then actually came to my site?

Or will this type of thing show up whenever someone enters a search that my site is listed under?

Please help me understand

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Dani AI

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Short answer: yes — a referer that points to a search-results page normally means a visitor clicked your listing and the browser sent that page URL to your server. Browsers include the referer header when following links, so seeing a search-engine URL with a query string in your logs is usually a real click-through. There are exceptions (crawlers that identify themselves, or rare cases of referrer spoofing), so check the other log fields before assuming it was a human.

What the query string means: the parameter that holds the search phrase shows what was searched; the pagination/offset parameter tells you which slice of results was shown; the page-size parameter shows how many results were returned on that page; the FORM/flag values are just internal tracking. In practical terms, an offset just past 10 with a page size of 10 means your listing appeared on the second page. Good catch by on the pagination and by on the click — and note to that the domain in the referer identifies the search provider (in this case Microsoft’s search, not Google).

How to confirm it was a real visitor: pull the exact access-log entry for that timestamp and check the IP, user-agent, request method, and HTTP status. A normal browser UA plus a non-bot reverse DNS and a 200 status is strong evidence of a human click. If the UA is a known crawler (msnbot/bingbot) or the IP resolves to a bot host, it’s not a click. Repeated odd referers with strange UAs often turn out to be referrer spam.

A few final notes: rel='nofollow' on the search-result link does not stop browsers from sending a referer — it only affects crawlers and SEO. Also, modern search engines and HTTPS have reduced the amount of query data passed in referers, so current logs may look different than they did in 2005. For ongoing tracking, rely on analytics tools plus webmaster/search-console data rather than raw referer lines alone.

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Member Avatar for OurNation

I think it means 10 people did But I dont know.

Member Avatar for DanceInstructor

hmm, there was only 1 ip address. I am the 11th listing on that search on msn :cheesy: so that is one of the numbers lol

Member Avatar for OurNation

count=10 is what I was thinking of.

Member Avatar for Dani

It means that someone did a google search for "western dance" and saw your link and clicked on it. I belive the 10 and 11 numbers have to do with your position in the results and perhaps what page you're on. Not entirely sure of those two.

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