Microsoft Wooing Users with SearchPerks

As Microsoft watches is small share of the Intern search market shrink even further, it's hoping to woo new search users with...prizes.

Earlier this year, Redmond software giant Microsoft introduced a cashback program that rewarded users of its Live Search service by offering an opportunity to get a discount on purchases made from partners via Live Search. But you know what they say: money can’t buy you love. So now Microsoft is hoping to bolster usage of its Live Search service by offering…prizes! Under a new SearchPerks program, users accumulate awards “tickets” as they use Live Search, and those tickets can be redeemed for prizes and merchandise when the promotion wraps up April 15, 2009. Participants must sign up by December 31, 2008.

SearchPerks is implemented as a download that appears on Internet Explorer’s toolbar. Downloading the Perk Counter earns 500 tickets automatically, and users can earn up to an additional 25 tickets per day just by using Live Search.

SearchPerks is Microsoft’s latest effort to drum up usership—and, they hope, user loyalty—for its Live Search offering. Microsoft’s Internet search efforts continue to run a distant third play behind both Yahoo and Google. According to comScore in August Google accounted for 63 percent of all U.S. Internet searches, with Yahoo running second at about 20 percent. Microsoft’s search efforts—including Live Search—accounted for an 8.3 percent share in the month. Microsoft hopes offering incentives for users to try out Live Search will increase their usership—and that the quality of their search offering will convert some of them into permanent users.

In the current market, Internet search is intimately tied to online advertising revenue, since approximately 40 percent of all online ad spending is spent on search.