Testing MSN HTTP Referer on Firefox
By Benj Arriola - Posted on Sun Sep 10, 2006Update: MSN/Live is now passing the HTTP_REFERER server variable from Mozilla Firefox users. This seems to be fixed since September 21, 2006 as observed by users. The story below is no longer valid.
Before I start, I just wanted to share that I have just joined Webmaster World and all I can say is, this forum is no nonsense at all. After listening to all the podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm, and always hearing in the different shows, the different people talking about them, I just told myself there really must be good information there. True enough, after reading post after post, I could not stop until I was really super sleepy to understand what I was reading. Information is just so much, you do not know where to start. No nonsense people and no ads, no long signatures with a bunch of links. Just very good discussions and sharing of information.
Now about this post, this was discussed by Cymbal saying that MSN is not passing HTTP Referers when on Firefox on Webmaster World that was raised in the forum just 2 days ago, and I decided to check it out too. So I added to my Wordpress Template the browser and referer using the PHP server variables HTTP_USER_AGENT and HTTP_REFERER and displayed them on top.
And to confirm if what they were saying was true I checked my site on Google, Yahoo and MSN, using both MS Internet Explore and Firefox. You can test it too, by visiting the links below and click on page going back to this site and notice the referer is missing when you come from MSN and using Firefox.
- http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aisulongseoph.com.ph
- http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fisulongseoph.com.ph
- http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=site%3Aisulongseoph.com.ph
If this is the case, then it means our analytics software or whatever web statistics software you use is not really reporting the right data and may lack the numbers from MSN that are Firefox users. And if you see in your stats you get traffic from MSN, then that means that these are MS Internet Explorer users. And since no referer is given back for MSN traffic from Firefox users, then I guess the stats will be reported as a direct visit or bookmarked by the browser.
Although I am not really worried about this. Since most Firefox users, are also the non-MSN users IMHO 
7 Responses to “Testing MSN HTTP Referer on Firefox”
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September 10th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite. [...]
September 10th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
[...] Browser: Referer: Why do I have this? Because I am testing MSN’s HTTP Referer when using Firefox [...]
September 11th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Could this be because Microsoft hates Firefox?
September 12th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Maybe it’s a way for Microsoft to contain the spread of Firefox. Then again, why use MSN when you have Firefox with the Google toolbar? hehehe
November 8th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
IMHO MSN have always been of low quality compared to other major search engines. I believe MSN just had the label of “major” search engine because of Microsoft, which has been known to church out low-grade products in the past.
November 17th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Please add firefox cookies/bad web sites immunization in next version!
Firefox 2 cannot reject third party cookies!!!!!!!!
December 17th, 2006 at 10:00 am
[...] I just haven’t been updating my news, and I always had my HTTP_REFERER displayed on top of my blog to explain the MSN HTTP_REFERER problem, but it seems like they have fixed it already as early as September 21, 2006, as reported by the people on Webmaster World. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]