• Information Week , Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:15 PM

Microsoft's bold move to offer prizes to users of MSN Live Search is paying off: for the first time since its inception (almost), MSN Search is showing growth. According to Web metrics firm Complete, MSN's search volume increased a whopping 67%, from 8.4% of total search queries in May to 13.2% in June.

Perplexingly, the Information Week report doesn't include Complete's numbers (perhaps there weren't any to publish) for Google and Yahoo, but it does mention data from Amazon's Alexa, showing that Google's search volume fell from 67% of total queries in May to 62.7% in June. Yahoo's share, meanwhile, fell a negligible 0.1% to 19.6%. Of course, comScore published markedly different numbers, underscoring the mess that is panel-based Web measurement, and there was no indication of a month-month drop for Google or pop for MSN. As Information Week says pointedly, "Your mileage may vary."

Nevertheless, Complete claims that bribery is paying huge dividends for Microsoft. So what exactly are these prizes? "A good portion of the additional Live searches are coming from the Live Search Club, where you can apparently play games for points which you can redeem for fine Microsoft products," Complete analyst Steve Willis wrote in a blog post Monday. "All of the games involve using Live's search engine -- to get the points, you have to search with Live." Willis adds that Club.live, an online game portal, saw its unique traffic rise from barely nothing in April, to 330,00 in May and now 3 million in June.

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