Live.com Plays Referrer Stats Games

While it is common, nowadays, to whine how Google shouldn't tell people how to make money with their websites (like selling links), this time Microsoft has done the same.

Lately, it's been noticed that what is really behind the scheme? Honestly, I don't know.

But for me, it screws my stats, makes me use Google Analytics instead of AwStats to see the top referrer websites and keywords. Why does Microsoft force me to use Google? I don't know, maybe thousands of employees didn't think much about it.

If you decide to blog the IPs, you will be out of the Live index. Go figure. Quote from Live botting and crawling increases AdSense impressions, thus lowering the income from running AdSense on your website(s). And in Michael's and in my opinion, intefering with someone's income is unacceptable.

Is Microsoft trying to ruin the AdSense game for Google so others would switch to other contextual advertising schemes? Now that'd be a plot. And a very likely one, even though not the one admitted officially ( $' /></a></ul> </div> <script> (function() { function initCopyableSections() { document.querySelectorAll('.article-content .copyable-section').forEach(function(section) { if (section.querySelector('.copyable-section__btn')) return; var btn = document.createElement('button'); btn.type = 'button'; btn.className = 'copyable-section__btn'; btn.setAttribute('aria-label', 'Copy to clipboard'); var label = section.getAttribute('data-copy-label'); btn.textContent = label ? 'Copy ' + label : 'Copy'; section.appendChild(btn); btn.addEventListener('click', function() { var contentEl = section.querySelector('.copyable-section__content'); var text; if (contentEl) { text = contentEl.textContent.trim(); } else { var clone = section.cloneNode(true); var btnClone = clone.querySelector('.copyable-section__btn'); if (btnClone) btnClone.parentNode.removeChild(btnClone); text = clone.textContent.trim(); } if (!text) return; navigator.clipboard.writeText(text).then(function() { var t = btn.textContent; btn.textContent = 'Copied!'; btn.classList.add('copied'); setTimeout(function() { btn.textContent = t; btn.classList.remove('copied'); }, 2000); }); }); }); } if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', initCopyableSections); } else { initCopyableSections(); } })(); </script>   <div class=$