Does MSN Search Favor IIS-Hosted Sites?

Does Microsoft consider the server environment a site is hosted on when applying relevancy rankings for their search results? If this were indeed true, wouldn't manipulation of this sort render their SERPs as biased and non-relevant?

WebProWorld If the /.) continues to yield the results his 1000 random keywords instead of the Zeitgeist. However, reactions were the same: not enough keywords were tested to formulate a strong hypothesis. Ivor is currently re-conducting his test, and this time, he's using keywords. However, results from this latest test have not been posted. Another point made by a number of people has to do with quality level of sites hosted on IIS environments, as opposed to those hosted on Linux or Apache environs. The general counterpoint indicated perhaps lesser quality sites, blogs, and vanity sites were being hosted on Apache/Linux, while the more optimized; search engine-friendly sites are apart of the IIS family (to which murdok's IT Manager, So what's going on, why the bias? I have no idea; I doubt it's all a big conspiracy... but some possible explanations spring to mind: Perhaps the MSN search has simply been coded by developers used to talking to IIS machines and so it just does that job better? Perhaps the MSN spider is taking advantage of some specific IIS features to provide enhanced indexing? However, Jay has some thoughts about Ivor's theory as well: "I don't buy it -- HTTP is HTTP is HTTP -- there is nothing in it that even allows for indexing. I mean a site is made up of pages with links -- you write a program to crawl those pages (follow every link). There is nothing there to help or hinder IIS/Apache/Linux. "The protocol, HTTP, is the same for Unix/IIS/Apache/insertfavoritewebserverhere. However, each server environment will return a header with what it is running, if you ask it. Although, many admins tell their servers to announce themselves as servers they are not -- to confuse hackers." Although the results from Ivor's extensive keyword test are not available, the early implications from previous tests have caused some arched eyebrows. However, it's almost silly to suggest such a thing simply because of the public relations mess MSN Search would have to handle if Ivor's data isn't coincidental. While it's true that MS has had their share of PR nightmares, one of this magnitude would be quite damaging to their credibility. No one would use an engine suspected of manipulating their results, and the folks at MSN Search know this as well. Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for latest search news.