Search share gained, credibility lost

Compete, the website-measurement startup, announced that Microsoft had boosted its share of U.S. search queries by two-thirds from May to June. Microsoft's share is still small: It grew from 8.4 percent to 13.2 percent of the total market, largely at Google's expense. So how did it do it? The answer is simple: payola. Microsoft's Live Search Club offers prizes to search users. But other search engines have offered similar payoffs to spur traffic with far less dramatic results. Here's why Live Search Club is succeeding as a payola scheme — but failing as a business maneuver.

• 1. Live Search Club is online gaming, not a reward for searches. Amazon.com's A9 used to provide a 1.57 percent discount on Amazon purchases if users made A9 their default search engine. Google offers random prizes to users who search through the Blingo.com site. Neither effort has provided substantial results. But Club Live has nothing to do with search: Instead, it runs online word games that generate automated search queries. Other programs rewarded fidelity to a search service; the Club just displays search results.
• 2. The games can be gamed. Several sites are offering bots or macros that automatically generate points for Club members. So, not only are human members not utilizing the search queries, but it's not even clear that its users are even human.
• 3. Free stuff = free users. Points earned through Live Search Club games can be redeemed for Microsoft products and swag. Prizes that normally cost hundreds of dollars can be had with a few hours effort, if that. That's one way to move Zune and Windows Vista units, anyway.

The payola scheme is transparent — and Microsoft's competitive advantage looks to be short-lived. Compete has already issued new results that subtract out the Live Search Club traffic. And industry insiders already understand that the results are not "real" search queries. The metrics firms will develop ways to factor out or block non-human bot and macro activity. If they can't, they'll simply eliminate all traffic deriving from Live Search Club.

And Microsoft appears to realize that its game was poorly designed. Vista, a pricey prize, has already been eliminated from the competition after Microsoft realized winners were reselling the licenses. Microsoft has also placed a cap on points earned per game.

Worst of all, the gaming venture has proved a distraction from Microsoft's real search gains. Factoring out the Live Search Club data, Microsoft's search share grew from 8.4 percent to 9.1 percent, a welcome increase after years of reverses. Instead, everyone's talking about how Microsoft tried — and failed — to game the search market.

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