Microsoft Hopes Prizes Will Attract New Searchers

BertieBaggio writes "Remember the long-running e-mail hoax that had Bill Gates testing an "e-mail tracing program" and offering to pay recipients big bucks if they passed his test e-mail along to all their friends? Well, the offer is true, sort of. Microsoft wants you to use its search engine, and it's got $1 million worth of prizes up for grabs for those who nibble at the offer. Following Yahoo's recent consideration of offering prizes to searchers, is this another tactic to lure users away from Google with candy and other shiny things?"

Comments

Re:What is the quality of MSN's search like?

[spinfire]

It does indeed, however generally I search Google first and if it fails me I'll try MSN, Teoma, Alltheweb, etc. In my observation, Google tends to be manipulated by malicious SEO more readily, but I think this may be due to the fact that they are such a huge, juicy target for SEO firms. The smaller, less popular engines are less likely to be targetted specifically by SEO, though generic SEO techniques still affect them.

In general, the freshness of MSN's index rivals that of Google. I think both of them tend to feature new sites more prominently, but I'm not sure exactly how much of this is my imagination.

Most major search engines offer a very clean interface these days as well, and MSN is no exception. However, MSN isn't advertising anywhere near as aggressively as Google is.