Microsoft Raises Stakes With Search Perks

Live SearchPerksMicrosoft continues to offer incentives to searchers to boost usage (and eventually market share) of its Live Search engine, the latest of which is called Search Perks. Some detractors call it bribery, others say that it's yet another desperate attempt to attract users--but according to stats from Hitwise, if Search Perks performs as well as Cashback, then the promotion should actually be called a success.

The software giant launched Cashback, which gives shoppers money back for every product they search for (and eventually buy) through Live Search in late May. Although the program boosted search volume by 15% a month later (per comScore), the question has been whether it would cause Microsoft's search share to continue to rise. It hasn't. Hitwise's data shows that Microsoft's overall search market share has remained relatively flat at about 5.5% from July through September. But what has risen is the overall percentage of Cashback traffic to Live Search.

Cashback traffic represented about 3.8% of the traffic to Live.com in mid-July. That jumped to over 6% by mid-September. "This rise in Cashback's traffic underscores the interest in the program, which is likely to be getting a boost from shoppers looking to save money and stretch their budgets, given the current economic climate," said Heather Dougherty, Hitwise's director of research, in a blog post.

The jury is still out on whether Cashback will ultimately help Microsoft steal search market share from Google or Yahoo, but the software giant doesn't seem ready to wait and see. Instead, Microsoft launched another promotion, called Search Perks, which mimics the rewards programs that are linked to most banking cards.

Users download an Internet Explorer app called a Perk Counter that tracks the number of Live Searches they run. They incur "tickets" for each search query (up to 25 per day) and get a bonus of 500 tickets just for installing the app. Tickets are redeemable for prizes like music downloads, frequent flyer miles and even cookbooks, and the Search Perks program runs through April 2009.

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