MSN / live.com Offers incentives to Search

[Discovery]

A small beta program has been launched in which MSN has asked a group of 4000 users to conduct searches until Feb of 2008 at live.com and provide feedback. The more searches they do, the more tickets they earn and can then redeem for prizes.

See full details of the program here including a screen shot of the email promotion:

http://www.junkclick.com/msn/msn_inc..._to_search.asp

What do you think of programs like this? Are they getting legitimate feedback on their search tool? Or are they looking to pad their live.com search numbers? What if they were to scale this kind of program to a much wider audience? How do you feel about the traffic that could come to you via a "paid for audience"?

Discovery

[Mel66]

I think it sucks, plain and simple. It's like iWon and other incentivized sites - meaning the users are not searching based on need, but based on wanting to win stuff. Which means they are not nearly as qualified as actual search visitors.

Discovery, have you joined the blogging ranks?

[Marcia]

I am finding bugs in MSN Search all the time, a few just this past week; but I have no idea where to send in bug reports. No doubt they'd get lost amidst the the regular feedback, and they're actually some serious things that impact a lot of sites as well as some of the search results.

[Discovery]

Ha no, I'm far to quiet for that plus I dont think I could go through the initiation ritual.

[AussieWebmaster]

seems like they are buying more search volume that may not have value... will ask about that tomorrow