Weird Google hit -- is this some kind of hack?

As of today, when I google for “visual studio express feature comparison” without the quotes, the first hit is for a site that is entirely in Farsi, which then redirects to Microsoft when clicked.

The site is this one – I’ll break the link in case it’s spyware infested or some such. Visit at your own risk!

http: //4tmu.ir/forum/redirector.php?aHR0cDovL3d3dy5taWNyb3NvZnQuY29tL3Zpc3VhbHN0dWRpby8=

An Iranian colleague tells me the text says something like “welcome…click here to register” etc.

Same behavior for my co-workers.

Anyone have any idea what’s going on? I’m wondering if it could be some kind of hacking activity related to the Iranian elections.

No, it just looks like the typical war between google and the SEO wizards. Sometimes the SEOs just beat google hands down. I dont see any malware or any suspicious in the source code of the page.

It’s some kind of redirect. Using the google cached version link (don’t know if that’s any safer) you get the 4tmu page up for a couple of seconds then you’re redirected to Microsoft Visual Studio.

NoScript tells me that there are no suspicious scripts attempting to run on the 4tmu site.

Right…I know it’s a redirect, but that’s not my question. I’m just surprised that an obscure site like that, with apparently no information on Visual Studio, could be ranked above Microsoft in Google’s results. I thought Google had all kinds of clever algorithms to avoid SEO techniques and “Google bombing”.

It’s an Iranian Site 4tmu.ir and Google doesn’t have a Persian translator yet. But here is a translator for anyone who wants to play with it

The whois for .ir returns this

So I guess you could always ask.