SearchPerks from Microsoft

The Idea

A very simple idea. Use Microsoft’s Live Search and get something back for doing so. You go to Search Perks, download a Perk Counter and get tickets/points for searches. At the end of the promotion you redeem the earned points for prizes – “from frequent flyer miles to music downloads to XBox 360 games”.

Screenshot from site (as supplied by Microsoft/PR)

What I think

I’m in two minds about this. As a loyalty programme for a search engine, this works. For most things that most people search for, search engines tend to return the same set of results. This is aimed at your regular casual web users, running Windows and IE (in fact, it only works on IE, so I can’t try it out), so for many, this will add benefit to their usage. The search team are also offering other benefits, such as this cash-back scheme with eBay. It works for the users, it gives something back whilst not really impacting what they are doing.

But understanding the reason why they are offering this paints a different picture. As a company, they are so far behind the market leader and the chances of them increasing share (in short term, I never make long term predictions online) is low. Looking at the promotions, my guess is that the Live Search team are being measured on traffic, not revenue, as they are speeding money to get traffic. The tactics they are using are about short-term gain, hoping that exposure to the product will mean some people will stick.

The Pitch

Plenty of information but I had to chase images to be used as there were no assets included in the email; however the request was answered promptly with the items I needed.