• ClickZ, Tuesday, February 14, 2006 10:31 AM

Both MSN and Yahoo have been discussing possible ways to bribe people to use their search engines in order to close the massive gap between Google and their respective second and third place services. Well, by the end of the month, MSN is officially kicking off a bribe-for-search campaign called MSN Search and Win. The promotion will reward random users who type in certain keywords over the course of the next several months. Prizes include gift certificates from the likes of American Express, Target, and Nike, as well as digital cameras and MP3 players. Three winners each month also get the right to donate $10,000, $25,000 or $50,000 to a list of charities on behalf of MSN. MSN execs said the campaign is principally designed to get more people to try its search engine. As noted earlier, Yahoo is also reportedly working on a similar strategy. Amazon, the online retailer, doles out shopping discounts to users of its search engine, A9. MSN will try to spread the word about its new promo effort via banner ads on MSN.com, and a Web site, MSNSearchandWin.com. It will also launch an offline campaign in late February.

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