Redmond (WA) - Microsoft has been ridiculed for the perks the company offers users in exchange for the use of its Live Search service. At least for now, Microsoft is showing signs of abandoning that strategy and introduced an additional search-rewards offer, in an attempt to bind users to its search engine, which is currently ranked as the third most popular search engine.

Open only to searchers in the United States, the new Live Search program requires users to install a small desktop counter on their PCs,  which records how many times Live Search is used. The campaign will run through April and will award Live Search users “tickets” for participating in the program, and also for every search that is conducted in a day (25 search maximum). The tickets are entered in a prize drawing contest that includes prizes like air miles, video games and free music downloads.

Older rewards programs offered by Microsoft, like the  Live Search Club, rewarded individuals when they played games using Live Search as well as a “cashback” feature in May that rewarded users for using Live Search with rebates for products purchased online.

Microsoft claims that the reward programs have had a positive impact so far. However, the greater test for Live Search will be following the program end in April, when users are no longer receiving rewards and have an opportunity to decide whether or not they liked Microsoft Live Search enough to stick with it without any incentive.

According to Nielsen Netratings, the current incentives are not enough to even keep Live Search levels stable. While all search providers combined actually suffered a year-over-year decline in overall searches (minus 7.7% to 7.2 billion searches in the U.S.), Google outpaced its main rivals once more: Google grew 3.1% to more than 4.3 billion searches, while Yahoo followed with a decline of 16.5% (18.1% share) and Microsoft with an even more dramatic decline of 23.8% (10.7% share). Nielsen Netratings estimates that users ran 770.6 million searches over Live Search in August.    

I will never understand...

Oct 01, 2008 11:33     

...why the biggest players in this business are always bickering over market share outside their core business. Did anyone really think m$ was going to beat google?
Scott report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

I love it! MSFT is trying to break Google's networ...

Oct 01, 2008 12:07     

I love it! MSFT is trying to break Google's network externalality - at least they know where they are. I believe that's the first step in a 12 step process
ClubbieTim report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Cool options

Oct 01, 2008 12:31     

Search results are really comparable. If I don't like the results I just jump over to a new search engine. Now getting paid to use their search service is a great idea. Google is good but they haven't improved their search. Give it time and Microsoft will pass them.
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