Microsoft is making yet another attempt at pay for search. Following in the footsteps of Cashback, a program the company launched in May, Redmond’s latest effort is called SearchPerks.
SearchPerks lets Live Search users earn “tickets” toward prizes — up to 25 tickets a day. The program is free to join, but Microsoft is instructing users to register by pasting the GetSearchPerks.com URL into an Internet Explorer browser. The program doesn’t work with Mozilla’s Firefox or Apple’s Safari. Users also have to use a Windows PC.
“At this time, SearchPerks is a limited promotion, though we remain open to expending availability of the promotion to different browsers and operating systems based on consumer interest,” Microsoft said.
Will SearchPerks Build Loyalty?
Here’s how SearchPerks works: Participating users agree to a small application download that tracks their usage. They get one ticket for each Live Search query they complete from now through April. That’s when users cash in those tickets for prizes or donate them to charity.
Will it attract more users? Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, isn’t holding his breath. While Live Search may indeed win some new users and cause them to change their search behavior, he said, it’s more likely that casual Live Search users may begin to use the search engine more frequently.
“The capping of the rewards at 25 points per day is intended to protect against fraud and also prevent people from just showing up and doing 25 perfunctory searches to max out on the daily reward quota and then move on,” Sterling said. “This is a play to change long-term behavior.”
As Sterling sees it, a searcher who begins to use the system to collect tickets and win prizes may settle into longer-term Live Search usage — because they have to in order to access the program’s benefits. That…