Microsoft is trying anything to get you to use Live Search. And now it’s time to add another to its attempts to try to pay you to use its service.
Dubbed SearchPerks, Microsoft’s latest scheme gives users points when they use Live Search, which can be redeemed for prizes. Users who sign-up before the December 31 deadline, must agree to download a small program that tracks their usage. Once installed, the users will get one “ticket” per day for every Live Search query, but Microsoft is capping the total number per day to 25. Once the program is up in April, users can trade those tickets in for prizes or, if they’re feeling philanthropic, they can donate the rewards to charity.
SearchPerks is an entirely different take on getting people to use Live Search than Microsoft’s previously announced Live Search Cashback program, which shifts Microsoft’s focus away from a cost-per-click model to cost-per-action model and shuttles some of the money from advertisers to users.
Microsoft believed the Cashback program would yield better results, while increasing market share and ostensibly believes the same could happen with SearchPerks. But as recent evidence shows, Microsoft’s Cashback scheme isn’t exeactly a slam dunk and the company hasn’t been able to stop Google’s rise in the search engine market.
So will SearchPerks be any different? It’s too early to tell. But begging people to use your search engine certainly doesn’t send the right signals to those who may be considering it.
Can you automate this? Or this there a captcha for each search
http://www.iopu...macros/firefox/
I’m a programer, Thanks for the idea!
obviously not a good one as u couldn’t think of that on your own
It’s a good Service for regular and heavy seach engine users. After checking 100 key word searches I found out that Live Search isn’t better than Google Search for the same topics, but at least as fresh and relevant. But there is some bias in both search engines where they make a difference. A search for some technical and marketing terms brings much more Mac related results in Google and much more Microsoft related results in Live Search. Maybe this has only to do with a different way of counting links, but the “preference” for Mac versus Microsoft was significant for a lot of keywords.
Functionality is there, site looks fine, they just need to do a better marketing job. First thing to go has to be the name. “Live Search”? Really now? I don’t believe any search engine that has the word “search” in it will succeed, especially combined with the equally banal word “live”. Microsoft, do a better job branding!
Agreed 100%, that is one of the absolute root causes.
Secondly, it would be nice if they could use all of the Billions pumped into MSFT Research to actually *innovate* something in search. You know… technology and stuff. As pathetic as the Quil launch was, at least they gave it a shot as far as innovating rather than merely catching up (I’m very surprised MSFT hasn’t bought them yet BTW).
Third, MSFT needs to get over the “Internet hang-ups” in its corporate DNA, and just get with the program whole-heartedly. Strife between their own internal divisions has them fighting with one hand behind their back (which the much resisted Break-up could have solved ironically).
But the branding issue is the most pressing, and also the cheapest to solve.
Get more details on their deep problem here:
http://business...ive-really-dead
Yikes! They subtract a ticket every time you search on Google!
At 25 points per day and 30 days per month, I can only earn 5200 points until Apr 2009. That too, if i were to go online every single day and make 25 searches. Hmm… Suddenly the rewards don’t look attractive enough for this effort.
I’m sure there must a stack of statistics behind this model. But is this really a good business model??
Ankush
http://www.donationpeople.com
I guess they want to discourage users to use Perl or browser addons like iMacros to do the search.
you get 500 for signing up and it says they will offer extra points throughout the promotion
in the very near future users will get smarter and demand billionaire behemoth sites such as goog to share with the people that helped build them and are keeping them in business.
nice to see they are trying different things. they need an outside “domain” that is not part of msn to do all there incentive test bedding.
MicroLocator.com
Arrington or other TechCrunchers – has there ever been a phenomenon like Locator Dude here? I mean he owns a ton of domain names, something not everyone can duplicate. So on that level, he must be pretty unique. But on another level, has anyone ever used TechCrunch the way he does? You should do a post of the Top 10 Biggest TechCrunch Comment Thread Jackers of All Time.
Just because you own a lot of something doesn’t necessarily make you very smart. Look at all the banks folding because they own a bunch of crappy mortgages. From what i can see this locator dude owns a ton of worthless domain names that will suck him dry before he ever returns a profit. Obviously he doesn’t have a business model because why would he spend all his waking hours on TC desperately trying to drive traffic to his site.
@allan
you have the perfect title for your site. personalized, keyphrase and common sense.
“Allan Youngs Incoherence” http://www.allanyoung.com
I rest my case. Court is Adjourned
The Honorable
JudgeLocator.com
@Phenom – thanks for coming back, i missed you.
95% of what is spun here is bubble. Im sorry your probably more interested in blahblahgirls. com
Not here for traffic. No ads on my site. Just sharing my potential and commentary in a language all my own. I will repeat what i said earlier for those that missed it or were not listening. People better “think hard and wide” before they comment on the potential of the mylocator network. At least allan had the heart to share his link to his website. http://www.allantyoung.com and share with the community who he is and what he is all about.
Phenom we are still waiting for you to come out the closet. Share yourself (substance), not your lips.
This wack a mole stuff is fun
easy prey.
KillerLocator.com
http://www.kill...locator-network
I don’t share my identity because you creep me out and I think you could potentially be dangerous. From your history of bizarre off topic angry and occasionally homophobic comments you are obviously not playing with a full deck.
Sorry – I’ve got to ask seeing as you are always on here selling your website – what does it actually do? I have had a look and can’t figure out what the point of it is.
On the subject of Searchperks, this does seem a bit desperate doesn’t it… The only thing that would get me switching to Live Search would be a better product, not a questionable money-back scheme. They’ll probably convert a few people but I can see this going the same way as Cashback’s wet fart.
@Chris
My site, potential, premise and natural language landscape speaks for itself. http://professi...ofile/mylocator
fyi everything is for sale here at the national inquirer of tech. Even blahblahgirls.com. This is spincity of tech. im just swimming with it in my own unique way. I appreciate your intrigue.
Somebody ban this locator dude and his spam
@P wee perry.( aka dummy)
ever look at all the spam articles about tech here? spam comes in 100’s of different forms.
you need to read the mylocator scripture. tale of my tape. anytime you want to debate me as spam take it to seesmic and you can reply on any of my videos. till then get back in the closet.
DummyLocator.com
you’re full of shit, i dont know what ur site does, its just a bunch of videos, and not very good ones either. what the fuck does ur site do? you have a lot of energy, but zero focus, spend some time to focus on what the hell you’re talking about, maybe there’s something good there, but maybe not (i think the latter)
shitlocator.com
@lolhead
please watch your language, there are other ways of getting attention. you could put on a wig and color your eyebrows like phenom. Come out the closet and let me and others in the community know who you are and what your about. Im sure there will be open minded people here like myself to welcome you with open arms. Im sorry that you cant fathom who i am or what i possess. Maybe it is because you never built, or fathomed building, a next generation search engine.
InventorLocator.com
If they would give away a Mac I’d try their crappy search.
Macs are too bready… maybe McNuggets
I might consider it IF I used Explorer. Lack of Firefox support pretty much means I can’t even try it.
This sounds rather like this UK search engine:
http://www.wabbadabba.com/
And this one iwon.com and this one blingo.com and this one winzy.com and this one bigdevil.com …………………………………….
I’m having a hard time not interpreting this as, “Search so bad we have to pay people to use it!” Although I suppose it could be merely just as good.
The thing that got me (and presumably a zillion others) to switch to Google was that their search was way better. No ads, no gifts, no nonsense. It’d be nice to think that Microsoft was confident enough in their skills to go for that approach.
The upside is that it’s entertaining. Microsoft has clearly gotten used to being the dominant player, as they don’t seem to be very effective as challengers.
They’ve had their Live Search Club (search and play games for prizes) for a while now. To be honest, it was exceedingly crappy. I finally (Monday) received the prize that I had ordered on July 10th, 2007.
Let’s hope they change fulfillment services for this one.
“To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate.”
FAIL.
Bit of desperation. I’ve worked on sites that reward you for stuff and whilst you do tend to get volume the quality is incredibly poor. Ad Center advertisers can’t be too happy with this news.
LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME! (microsoft that is)
“To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate. Copy this URL and paste it into Internet Explorer”
While trying with firefox… whatever they’re giving away is definately not worth switching away from BOTH firefox and google.
Can you say desperate?
I have a better idea. Why not make Livesearch actually worth your while and attract new users because of its quality. Let’s face it. Livesearch sucks as a search engine. Google steals the show without question. We can all agree that MS has failed miserably with its release of Vista, as well as their release of Livesearch.
MS show lots of un-related staff.
Example: “4vladimir”…simple? right? 9 characters…
why I getting documents with ‘vladimir’ and somewhere-in-the-document “4″ ?!
This is VERY-VERY bad!!
“More”…Yes!
“More Junk”…NOOOOOOO !!!
Someone needs to get fired. Paying people to use your service rarely works, and is particularly bad with advertising. The only people who value their time so low they’re willing to use services like these make for rubbish ad demographics. To do it once is unfortunate, to do it again, after the first attempt didn’t work, looks like carelessness.
How about some clever adverts? If Seinfeld’s not still on the payroll, find some other mediocre comedian best known for racist outbursts and get him to tell consumers that The Unabomber Hates Cashback Schemes.
Microsoft Live Search Sucks!
As all know that the search quality from live search is not that good. I believe it is time for them to open the search feeds (search api without limitations) like Yahoo BOSS. We did experiments on live search by running our algorithm and found the quality is significantly improved, just like our algorithm improves the quality of Yahoo search.
If you read the fine print they say imply that bait and switch tactics are permitted for the prizes themselves during this promotion…see below.
No thanks MS.
Please note, the prizes displayed here are representative of the types of prizes that are available for this promotion. Actual prizes may differ. Prizes are subject to availability at the time of redemption. Microsoft may change the number of tickets you must earn to receive a certain prize at any time. There may be a limited number of a particular prize; those prizes will be provided on a first-come first-served basis.
What is that!!They’ve gone crazy!!
I like the http://www.blingo.com model better. Searches, and random prizes! I’ve won amazon gift certs, movie tix, and an ipod shuffle. I dont need to install programs or anything. I guess the fact is that you’re not guaranteed a win, which turns some people off.
Put up an xbox or xbox 360 then it may get my attention.
iWon 2: This time it’s personal.
It looks like very soon I will start receiving paycheck in my mailbox for using Windows XP or Hotmail… I like it !!! google should start the same also
I was actually going to sign up for this except their prizes don’t look that great… give me a gift card or something instead of that stuff.
for most who don’t want to wait to accumulate enough points for a prize, why not sell those points for cash, at http://www.urturn.com. We created the UroExchange to enable just that.
wow, MS sure is desperate these days, but I can see why, Google & Apple are killing them.
http://gatesand...s.blogspot.com/
Wow. What a lot of negative comments about this promotion. Microsoft Search has improved a lot over the years, and Michael Arrington himself has made the case that the world needs a search engine competitor to Google to keep the internet economy healthy. The irony is that we need the old desktop monoploy of Microsoft to counterbalance the new internet monopoly that Google is creating. As an advertiser I’m very worried at the power Google is assembling.
So now Microsoft’s search is pretty good, but no one wants to bother giving it a try. What do you do if you’re marketing Microsoft search? Reward people a little for giving it a try. This is just a promotion, not necessarily a long term program. But even if it is, so what? We choose credit cards for airline miles, or for 1% cash back. Why not the same for our search engines? Even better, if this takes off Google would have to respond, and it would be much more expensive for them since they have so much market share.
So it’s a good move to drive trial, perhaps put Google on defensive, and make the internet a healthier place.
Most of these comments sound like mindless haters
. Give the folks at Microsoft a break. At least they’re trying.
Let me tag this post:
FAIL
DESPERATE
LAME
SCAM
M$
There, tagged…
Amazon’s a9 tried the same trick before — offering 1.08% discount on all Amazon orders to a9 users. Didn’t work! They eventually shut down a9.
Plus, the make-sure-lotus-1-2-3-will-never-run trick might have worked 20 years ago. But if your attitude is still screw-firefox, I think you’re making a big mistake, Microsoft! On the web, you’re the challenger, not the incumbent!
Yeeeeaaah. Cause that’s why office online is so small and Internet explorer is not the most widely used browser…
Oh. Wait.
Looks like they can be sued, because someone over there…can’t do basic math.
http://www.gets...ampaignid=perks
Their top prize is an X-Box wireless controller for 5,500 tickets.
At the top of the screen, it says the promotion ends on April 15th, 2009.
Today is 10/01/08.
Total time span for contest is 6.5 months.
Assume months have an average of 30 days.
30 days x 6.5 months = 195.00 total days.
195 total days x 25 maximum tickets per day = 4,875 maximum possible tickets for the entire promotion period.
4,875 + 500 tickets for signing up = 5,375 GRAND TOTAL tickets possible.
*BTW, the actual number of days for the promotion is 197 days. That results in a grand total of 5,425. AGAIN, someone at Microsoft can’t add!
haha! I’m glad someone checked their math, that is kind of strange. For something that will pull me from Firefox and Google, I don’t think I’m going to try it.
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Note Software
MS really need to do much better job…
Example #2.
1. goto: http://www.tech...comment-2488299
2. find text: “In addition, Xiaoli Bi, who formerly served as the Company’s vice president of technology”
3. open this page in two Browser: compare MS Explorer and Google Chrome
4. so, what do you think ?!
5. You can write me back: 4vladimir@gmail.com
(SQA Engineer 12+ years, do you need help?!)
M$ thinks it’s 1998.
oh the smell of desperation… and oh yea, only works on IE!
http://www.gets...p;statusid=2101
If only the prize for searching for something was relevant search results. Then I’d be interested. If Microsoft is going to give me free Ramen for searching for VHDL tutorials I don’t really care that much.
They stole the idea from Scour.com- they give you points straight up for every search that is redeemable for visa gift cards!
I cannot believe that there are people in MS who would approve something stupid like this. Do they now that the year is 2008?
I can be paid to move away from Google. But you will have to pay me much much more to get rid of my Linux system just so I can use a crappy browser.
“To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate. Copy this URL and paste it into Internet Explorer:”
And those of us who don’t actually live in the states don’t get to take part… Bah.
Can’t wait to take advantage of this one.
http://niche-au...e.blogspot.com/ ——–>Niche Audience
http://memoment...38;gt;Memorable Moments