Search Engines' Reward Programs 83
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.'"
Door Prizes (Score:5, Insightful)
You can register for said prizes; all you have to do is fill out your name, telephone number, address and date of birth. Then, after you don't win, you get to put up for the rest of your time at that residence with crap junk mail. May the lord have mercy on your soul if you give those people your e-mail address.
If you have to log in to use your favorite search engine, I'd suggest finding a different one.
Not quite breaking news (Score:3, Insightful)
(And yeah, boy, that whole "You have to tell us who you are so we can write out a check" tradeoff had never occurred to me. When I take the restaurant survey in hopes of winning $25 grand, they probably put me in their database, too.)
Good search results are my reward (Score:2, Insightful)
If you need traffic, offer $$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you say Google. Everyone uses them (not everyone, but most) because they are historically good. No one is going to change unless something is drastically better AND they know it. No one will know unless they try some other engine. Ergo, to get traffic people offer "prizes."
Basic PR. Unless the engines are really better than google, everyone will go back (Unless they really pay out the wazoo.)
Good luck to them if they can improve on G. (Although MS may subsidize it just to hurt G. No one else can afford to do that.)
$.02
I GoodSearch for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (Score:2, Insightful)