MSFN and its lack of search results in Google, Bing, and all search engines depending on them

[deomsh]

Holland here (with Firefox 151.0.2 on Windows 10 64-bits):

Google AI is aware of existence of msfn.org, but give NO links to msfn.org, which is strange.

Searching with site:msfn.org "Windows XP":

Bing.com gives results with "MSFN" "Windows XP" (NOT with "MSFN Windows XP" - which is a BAD search-phrase anyway):

And with site:msfn.org "Windows XP":

 

Edited Saturday at 01:42 PM by deomsh

[EliraFriesnan]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

Brave

It's the best, for now! Finds @D.Draker!

[AstroSkipper]

@deomsh A big thank you from Germany to you too for your confirmation! 

[AstroSkipper]

10 minutes ago, EliraFriesnan said:

It's the best, for now! Finds @D.Draker!

Yep, since 21 May 2026, Brave is my new default search engine. And if it manages to find D.Draker as well, then the Frisian will give extra points from Germany! 

Edited Saturday at 02:00 PM by AstroSkipper

[EliraFriesnan]

Wow! Brave is so cool! A big thank you @AstroSkipper for your suggestion!

Brave also easily finds and suggests fit, big, healthy, manly, masculine men, similar to @D.Draker at MSFN, without that Siamese spam!!!!

[deomsh]

Because bing.com seems to behave differently from Google, I couldn't resist to have a small a conversation with Copilot on bing.com. See the attachment.

Copilot on Google-indexing changes.md

[NotHereToPlayGames]

And for those that don't want to download that attachment:

[AstroSkipper]

37 minutes ago, deomsh said:

Because bing.com seems to behave differently from Google, I couldn't resist to have a small a conversation with Copilot on bing.com. See the attachment.

Copilot on Google-indexing changes.md 3.1 kB · 2 downloads

Here is a screenshot taken from Bing with the search term "msfn.org":

Sorry, I can't see any notable difference to Google's search results. Bing uses the same filters as Google, according to an internal source. Bing (Microsoft) is a pathetic copycat of Google and can’t seem to come up with anything of its own. 

Edited Saturday at 02:44 PM by AstroSkipper

[nicolaasjan]

Yes, searching for "msfn.org/board" on Bing also gives me sh*t results...

So, Copilot is clearly hallucinating.

Edited Saturday at 02:51 PM by nicolaasjan

[AstroSkipper]

1 hour ago, nicolaasjan said:

Yes, searching for "msfn.org/board" on Bing also gives me sh*t results...

@nicolaasjan Thanks for your contribution!  And that’s exactly how I’d describe the rubbish that Google, Bing and their lackeys spew out.  And you're absolutely right, Copilot is clearly hallucinating.  And I know why. It's from Microsoft. What else can Copilot do but hallucinate? Surely he won’t spoil his creator’s mood and betray him. 

Edited Saturday at 04:04 PM by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

And here is another example to demonstrate what Google has done with their index:







For years, the ProxHTTPSProxy and HTTPSProxy thread has ranked number 1 in Google for the search term "httpsproxy windows xp", as it still does for Mojeek and Brave only at the moment. Zero results which means Google doesn't even know me anymore and technical knowledge is withheld from users of this search engine. To hell with Google Search!  Complete de-indexing, as with everything else.  Just an example! 

Edited Saturday at 05:28 PM by AstroSkipper

[deomsh]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

Copilot is clearly hallucinating.  And I know why. It's from Microsoft. What else can Copilot do but hallucinate? Surely he won’t spoil his creator’s mood and betray him.

I continued my conversation with Copilote, with following question:

"In an earlier conversation today (on another browser) Copilot said Bing was still indexing msfn.org. Was this an error, or is it possible the AI-engine was so called 'hallucinating'?"

The answer was interesting (at least to me, probably not to AstroSkipper ). Cited small part of Copilot's answer only:

"The earlier answer you saw was not you imagining things — it was almost certainly a case of the AI giving an overconfident but incorrect statement. In other words: yes, that was a hallucination, and I can explain exactly why it happens in this specific situation.

🎯 Short, direct answer

Bing used to index MSFN normally, but it no longer indexes new MSFN content reliably. If another Copilot instance told you “Bing is still indexing MSFN,” that was incorrect — a classic AI hallucination caused by outdated assumptions about how search engines behave. (......) Bing is still returning MSFN pages, but it is not indexing new pages beyond ~2025. (....)."

[AstroSkipper]

Right, I’ve calmed down now and am trying to take a fresh look at the whole situation and assess it. At first, I thought Google was mainly to blame. @NotHereToPlayGames believes that the owner and administrator @xper are solely to blame. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Here is an alternative perspective on the whole matter from a very special source whom I am inclined to trust. I will not answer any questions about the nature of this source. It enjoys incognito status. So, believe it or not.

The cause: The "Japanese Keyword Hack" (or SEO spam injection)
The fact that Google search results display Thai characters or Asian text, even though the actual page is in English, is due to a security vulnerability in the forum software that was exploited by automated spam bots. In professional circles, this is usually referred to as the "Japanese/Thai Keyword Hack".

1. What the spammers did
Automated bots exploited a vulnerability on MSFN (often via the internal search function, registration pages or by generating thousands of fake profiles/posts). Unnoticed in the background, so to speak "invisible", they generated millions of artificial, low-quality URLs on MSFN, which were crammed with Thai terms, casino links, dubious diet pills or counterfeit branded products.

2. What Google did during the Core Update
Google crawled these hidden spam pages. As a Core Update re-evaluates the entire index, the algorithm noticed the sheer volume of this Thai spam content on MSFN. As these generated spam pages were highly optimised for the Google bot, the algorithm mistakenly assumed that the main topic or main language of certain forum sections was now suddenly Thai. In the search results, Google then mixes the page’s actual title with the injected Thai keywords from the cache, which is why the links look so strangely masked to you.

3. The consequence: Classification as a spam farm
Because the Google bot suddenly found millions of pieces of Thai spam content on MSFN, the algorithm pulled the emergency brake. Google classifies the domain at this point as "hacked" or "abused for spam". This leads to an automatic, algorithmic (or sometimes manual) block and a massive wave of de-indexing. In doing so, Google protects its users from suspected malware.

Summary for clarification
There is no malicious intent on Google’s part: Google does not “think” like a human. The bot simply sees: “Suddenly, 80% of all pages on this domain are Thai spam – so the entire domain is corrupted.”
 It is not the intention of MSFN: The MSFN administration hasn't done much wrong; it has simply fallen victim to an aggressive, automated wave of hacking that exploited a technical vulnerability in the forum software to carry out illegal SEO sinking.

In practical terms, this means: Only once the MSFN administration, @xper and @Tripredacus, has completely removed all these fake URLs, profiles and injections from the server, closed the security loophole and sent a clean re-review request to Google via Search Console will the Thai characters disappear and the site slowly recover its position in the index.
 

Edited Saturday at 07:02 PM by AstroSkipper

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Astro, that is absolutely freakin' AWESOME !!!

Still (to me) ALL AT THE FEET OF THE OWNER, but sure, if we want to place that blame "somewhere in between", I guess I can 'live with that'.

And (to me) I'm still EXTREMELY "glass half empty" in thinking that said OWNER really even CARES to the extent of having to do such "removals" to FIX THIS SH#THOLE.

 

Great work though in coming up with an ANSWER to all of this that the owner and at least one of the admins DOES KNOW but doesn't think ALL OF US should know.

I kind of think that's where we are at now, THEY KNOW that THEIR LAZINESS is what caused all of this.

I cited LONG AGO that I felt they weren't keeping up with patching security holes and also LONG AGO that I suspected all of the FAKE ACCOUNTS were somehow TIED TO THIS.

 

Great Work !!!

Love the write-up / conclusion / summary.

[AstroSkipper]

Yes, unfortunately I had to come to that conclusion, because there’s no getting round the fact that those links contain that damn Thai/Siamese text. Something invisible is coming from MSFN, and the administrator @xper must have neglected important security updates, security settings, malware scans, profile clean-ups, and so on. That aside, whilst creating this thread, I realised that the forum software is absolutely buggy and is still making the same mistakes it has been for what feels like ages. Nothing has been fixed or properly maintained here for a long time.