So I sent a message to MSN, via this contact form. My message follows:
I am the owner of the website at http://www.uborka.nu/
On all our pages we have a META robots tag in the header, with parameters noindex, noarchive, nofollow. This tag has always been in place.
This site appears at the top of an MSN search for “uborka”. The MSN web spider should see this tag and act upon it by not indexing my site.
Please fix your web spider immediately.
Seemed fair, I thought. I got this response:
Hello,
Thank you for your message to MSN Privacy.
Unfortunately, I am unable to assist you with your support request as it does not relate to Privacy.
Support for MSN products and services can be found at the following Web site:
http://support.msn.com/contactus.aspxPlease resubmit your inquiry at this site and an MSN support agent will contact you promptly with assistance.
For additional information about PC Health, Safety and Security, please visit: http://security.msn.com/
For additional information about the MSN Privacy Statement ,please visit: http://privacy.msn.com
Sincerely,
Sandeep
MSN Privacy
Funny that. I would argue that my request DOES concern my privacy. I think my next step would be to use .htaccess to block the msnbot. That’ll learn them.
I have no idea what that means, but GREAT, do it.
I think (think, mind) that you’re writing to the division of MS that runs things like Hotmail rather than the part that looks after search.
Try this page. There’s an email address to get your site removed. Whether this actually works is a moot point.
Best of luck though!
As I blithered about recently, I’ve ended up doing a mini-script to block Google Images from d4d™ after repeated requests to google to remove the page from their search results.
I’m sure a similar thing would work with the msn bot – or, as you say, a .htaccess fiddle will do the job too.
Either way, good luck with getting rid of the numbnuts bastards.
Amongst Microsoft’s advice for getting yourself removed from its search engine, from that page that Pete A found:
“Remove the pages from your site.”
Ha x 100000.
In the light of this, I’m removing Uborka from the web straight away.
If you’re reading this, it must still be in your cache. Hit refresh to update.
Still there? Uhm, try holding down shift whilst pressing refresh.
No luck? Must be something to do with your proxy server.