Lord of the Web

First it was Live Cashback. Now its SearchPerks. In a move to grab more market share in the Google dominated search industry, Microsoft has come up with yet another way to pay the users of its efficient but very sparingly used Live search engine.

Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program has failed to grow the company’s search traffic significantly, like many had expected. So Microsoft must have decided to try another strategy- the SearchPerks program-which it says was already in the works and isn’t a successor to Live Search Cashback. SearchPerks is an entirely different take on getting people to use Live Search than Live Search Cashback program, which shifts Microsoft’s focus away from a cost-per-click model to cost-per-action model and gives some of the money from advertisers to users

Microsoft’s SearchPerks scheme gives users points when they use Live Search, which can then be redeemed for prizes or donated to charity. Users must agree to download a small software that tracks their usage of Live Search and they will get one “ticket” per day for every Live Search query, the cap on which has been made to be 25 per day. Once the program begins in April, users can trade those tickets in for prizes.

The Redmond giant’s main aim in introducing the SearPerks program seems to be about spreading the word about live search and gain some kind of loyalty amongst its users. Time will tell if its efforts bear any fruit.