Desperation Part 2: MicroDud to Offer Searchers Prizes for using Live Search

[mandy]

First came cash. Now, Microsoft is offering up prizes to try to get to you to use its Live Search product. The company announced the start of a new SearchPerks initiative Wednesday. The program awards frequent flyer-style points for Live searches that can then be redeemed for various gifts.

It's the latest move in Microsoft's struggle to gain ground in the Google-dominated search market. Recent research from ComScore shows Google holding on to 63 percent of all U.S.-based searches, with Live coming in third at 8.3 percent. (Yahoo accounted for 19.6 percent.)

SearchPerks works by tracking your Live queries -- up to 25 a day -- and maintaining a running total from now until April of 2009. Users are required to download and install a separate utility to manage the numbers. As of now, it works only with Internet Explorer...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Microsof...64678.html