Search Engines' Reward Programs

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Search engines are dangling rewards and cash prizes to attract customers to their sites, the Wall Street Journal reports. MSN is offering free nights at the Four Seasons and other goodies to people who search for one of roughly a thousand terms on a rotating list. Yahoo's GoodSearch donates a penny to charity for each search. And Blingo hawks giveaways including iPods. But, the WSJ reports, 'There are strings attached to some of the reward programs. Some require users to register personal information like a name or email.'"

Comments

Re:interesting, but don't lump Google into this mi

[aricept]

And neither, for that matter, is Yahoo. From TFA:

"A new site called GoodSearch.com, launched late last year by Los Angeles-based GoodSearch LLC, aims to lure repeat users by donating roughly a cent to a charity of the user's choice every time a search is conducted on its Yahoo-based search engine."

The line referencing Blingo is similar. Somone misunderstood "Powered by Google", methinks.

Re:Not quite breaking news

[Rob T Firefly]

I think iwon.com was advertising heavily on TV and radio back then.

similar strategy for other websites, too

[slackaddict]

I have a hardware giveaway that I draw every month on my site... It's a shameless attempt to attract new readers/members and I openly state that. No big deal. Lots of websites do the same thing. At least I giveaway good hardware that geeks like. :-)