Hmmpost

Microsoft has released a new program called Search Perks (U.S and Internet Explorer only link: getsearchperks.com) which incentifies up to 25 live searches per day between now and April 15, 2009. You get 1 ticket per search (max 25 tickets per day) and these tickets can be traded in for various prizes.

The SearchPerks program is new but club.live.com has been incentifying search activity for some time now. It’s not a new concept for Microsoft or several other search engines like Blingo and Winzy. My personal feelings on incentifying search is that it’s not a working strategy for dethroning Google but won’t go as extreme as Paul Glazowski at Mashable who writes: A sensible person might say SearchPerks, as with the Cashback, only serves to devalue the company. Something of a last ditch attempt. Or attempts, plural. And that may well be true.

OR, Paul, maybe some people who are already using Live Search will simply add the counter, rack up tickets and bag some freebies for doing little extra. I see these sort of perk programs like swag at conferences which doesn’t in any way devalue companies, in fact, it promotes them.  We’re already in attendance to the conference, so why not accept the free magazines, t-shirts, pens, coffee cups and more? I don’t hear people crying about how this swag devalues any companies. As for Microsoft’s Live Cashback program, which I wrote about back in May, I still don’t get what the general bashing was about there either. Fine, bash the program if you tried it and didn’t like it, bash the program for not having your favorite online store(s) (as my wife did), bash it if you don’t get your rebate (like for my first and only order, gasp), but bashing it because it was too "complex" or because you think it’s a lame attempt to get people to use Live Search as some people were doing is bogus. While it wasn’t any kind of requirement when I started working with the Zune Team in the podcast area in June I decided to switch my default search away from Google to Live Search. I was curious if I’d be able to get along without Google search. Since then I have found myself navigating away from Live Search a few times back to Google for some searches but mostly Live Search has done the job better than I expected. That’s right, Google, which I still own stock in BTW, isn’t that much better than Live Search. It’s still better, yes, but you won’t be completely lost by switching to Live Search if you want to seriously compare as I’ve been doing. My most used browser these days is Firefox although I still must have IE open every day because I need it for both our businesses. Some of the corporate sites we deal with in our offline business only work with Internet Explorer. Escaping IE 100% simply isn’t reality for all of corporate America. Since I still average at least 25 searches every work day, Microsoft is now giving me some swag for doing something I was already doing, thanks SearchPerks. I use Live Search in Firefox too and it’s a bummer that they won’t incentify me for that, but something like SearchPerks isn’t going to drive me back into using Google as my default search there. The SearchPerks program is not going to have me trying to drum up extraneous searches just to earn these tickets (that would be a violation of the TOS anyway). I remain curious how many other people are already using Internet Explorer with Live Search? The only thing these folks need to do is add the counter install which takes a couple minutes and then it’s business as usual. Now for the folks using Safari on the Mac, Google Chrome, Opera or Firefox with Google, etc. Well, you are already set in what you’re using for search and the browser you’re most comfortable with and I don’t see SearchPerks being enough incentive to change. That’s ok. It’s also ok for people to be happy using what they are using and getting a little addition swag. Now there’s something people might also find to be a sensible perspective, Paul.