The MSN Live Cashback program is called “Search Perks” (www.getsearchperks.com) — which is usable only in Internet Explorer (sorry Firefox).

MSN Live’s new promotion rewards visitors that use Live Search with tickets redeemable for various prizes including airline miles, music downloads and even xBox accessories.

Here’s how Search Perks works:

• Get 500 tickets just by signing up and downloading the Perk Counter
• Start searching using Live Search at Live.com and MSN.com, or on Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger
• For every search (up to 25 per day), you’ll earn a ticket towards great prizes
• Stay tuned for additional ways to earn tickets once you join the promotion
• Redeem your tickets for prizes once the promotion ends on April 15, 2009

The deadline to register for MSN Live’s Search Perks is December 31st, 2008. This is just one of the many marketing attempts that are coming out of Redmond, WA. We have all seen the Seinfeld episodes that are targeted towards Apple, now Microsoft is trying to win search engine share by rewarding users with free gifts.

- Nicholas Abramovic

Nicholas has always found MSN Live to give accurate search results and is now excited to get rewarded for using MSN Live.

Source: Nielsen Online

Google continues to grow both in searches in and in market share. In July Google’s searches increased 16% over last year. Yahoo’s searches decreased 11 percent while Microsoft searches dropped 10%. Ask.com which has shifted its focus to targeting soccer moms and women grew 13% for 2% of the market share. Microsoft however had made a lot of gains in the past few months by providing monetary incentives to searchers for using their live.com search engine. It has brought many users to their site and increased their market share.

However Google owns 60 percent of the 8 billion searches and continues to own this market by a large lead. The industry as a total increased 3 percent in terms of total searches.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing

Some quick updates on the MSN - Yahoo saga.After the most recent offer was rebuffed by Yahoo, both MSN & Yahoo are potentially targeting AOL. As the Aug 1 shareholder meeting nears, both sides are trying to leverage their position and out position themselves for what is bound to be a heated conversation where landscape changing decisions will be made.

Will Yahoo merge with AOL giving Yang some leverage going into the meeting that Yahoo is heading in the right direction and do not need MSN? Will MSN come in and scoop them up for their own benefit both in their standings in the search world but also for this upcoming meeting? Either way, what kind of impact will that have on the Yahoo Google partnership that apparently Yang was overheard admitting that it was an anti-competitive move against MSN?

The battle continues. Stay tuned to see what happens when the dusts settles.

UPDATE: This feels like following a sports rumor mill where information gets leaked and rumors go around that particular athletes will be traded..

There is some word going around that the news about the AOL acquisition is being more participated by people close to the Time Warner company. Time Warner apparently sees this situation as an opportunity to unload a depreciating asset. AOL once a leader in the internet space has lost tremendous brand awareness and affiliation with web browsing and as an internet provider. Neither Microsoft or Yahoo! are trying hard to acquire AOL but are simply listening as Time Warner makes the pitch. A deal at this point involving AOL before the Aug 1 shareholder date could be a reach.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing

The search landscape has always been prone to big changes. Universal Search comes to mind. The revamp of Google’s algorithm last year caused epic chaos and closing of businesses. However in the first 6 months of 2008, it’s been relatively quiet other than the Yahoo MSN acquisition drama. Here are some quick hits for the big search engine players.

Google

- Finished the Acquisition of DoubleClick: I recently made a visit to the Google SF campus and there seems to be a lot of talk about many features and tools brewing between Google & DoubleClick. I hope Google could really capitalize on DoubleClick’s strengths and pump out some new betas soon.

- Questions about Search Growth: There was much hoopla about ComScore’s data release sometime in February about the slowing growth of the search market. Wall Street Analyst responded with concerns and lowering of valuations. However there was immediate response by the search expert blogosphere claiming Wall Street has no idea what they are talking about and the many inaccuracies of the ComScore data. I for one don’t forsee Google or any search firms running into any trouble. In this down market, companies continue to allocate a greater amount of their marketing budgets to search as search has been found to be the most effective marketing medium outside of email blasting your consumer base. It is also highly attractive during the down turn because it is direct marketing meaning you know for every dollar you put in how much you get out.

- Google Sites: Launched in Feb. This tool allows you to collaborate with others and create a website. Similar to a wiki, it can be edited and modified by multiple people. It is fully integrated with Google Docs.

-Google Health: Launched in May. I have to admit I’ve not used this feature. If anyone has any feedback or comments it would be greatly appreciated.

- Google Planner: Launched in June. This is a research tool to further give insight and visibility into Google’s Content network. You can sort by demographics or type of sites and see what websites from the Google Content Network matches with you set of inputs.

- Google Death: Just kidding. Partially. As many know Google pumps out betas and are constantly testing new products and features. Two of these features specific to search engine marketing are getting the axe. Cross Channel Tracking and Pay Per Action Campaigns. Both are a tragedy and has made things a bit complicated for our Google Adwords Management though I could see their reasoning. By eliminating these tools the need to utilize their Google Analytic Tools become all the more important. Sneaky Devils.

Yahoo

- Acquisition: Hands down the biggest news of the first half of 2008. Microsoft put in a bid to acquire Yahoo. There has been endless coverage of this saga. Even now there are whispers of Yahoo being more open to selling themselves to Microsoft at the lower bid price. With the recent partnership with Google, any acquisition will cost Yahoo $250 million to break out of the contract.

MSN

- MSN AdCenter: The only big news outside of the acquisition is the continued roll out of the Microsoft AdCenter Editor desktop tool. As they continue to expand the beta program, more and more word is coming out on its functionalities. Speculation abound on how this will affect MSN search. LeadQual has access to this beta and so far we’ve run into many issues and bugs, but still its a billion times better than MSN’s web UI, so we’ll patiently wait for the updates.

ASK

- They are still alive?: You bet they are. The reason you are hearing less and less of them in the search world is that they shifted their strategic focus from competing against Google & Yahoo for market share to targeting a specific niche: Middle Aged Women & Housewives. If your company caters specifically to that demographic, its a good time to actively think about advertising on their site.

Paul Lee
Sr. Manager of Web Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing

How to Get on the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program?

As some know, but seemingly many do not, Microsoft has been inviting small groups of adCenter users to try out their adCenter editor beta (ACE). When I first heard about this rumored tool I could not for the life of me figure out how in the world I can get on this special “beta list”. I searched for information online but found very little information. No links, no blog entries, no articles. I had to resort to asking colleagues and even then many of them were not aware of this beta program. Perhaps Microsoft wanted to announce this tool with a bang and keep in under wraps during the beta period? Who knows?

Signing up for Beta

So how did I do it? Someone must say something!

Perhaps this is not the news some of you were looking for, but I had to go through our dedicated account rep. We made sure they had a clear understanding of how large our collection of accounts were as a whole and asked if we could sign up for this rumored beta program. Our rep had previously not brought up this beta test, but was more than willing to help us out once we brought up the issue. We were sent a signup form and that was that. Now we had to wait.

Invitation:

Several weeks later we were invited into the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program. Considering MSN AdCenter incredibly difficult web UI we’ve always limited our exposure in MSN. Though MSN’s traffic great, there is so little of it thus the time needed to run a MSN account is not worth the benefits. Needless to say this tool was met with great excitement.

Installation:

Of course in Microsoft style the signup process took up 50 steps. I was hoping for a big “Download Now” button, but then I remembered this is Microsoft. I had to sign up for a hotmail/live.com account. Then register for their Microsoft Connect service. Several steps along the way it asked me to go to a particular pages but there were no links so I had to navigate around to find it. Perhaps this is an ingenious way of weeding out the less tech savvy adCenter users? After clicking around endlessly I found myself finally in the middle of text heavy page staring at a download link. Finally! I downloaded the editor then hit setup. An error popped up saying I was missing some key files. No instructions on how to get them. Great. I went back to the download page, read through the page and discovered if you are using firefox you need some plugin. So I hit the link and I am promptly redirected to the Mozilla site. I happen to think ahead and copied the URL of the download page since I realized once you install the plugin it’s going to ask to restart firefox. So I install it, install the plugin, restart firefox, repaste the URL in the browser. Download the file again. This time it finally installed! After it finished installing, it disappears leaving me to wonder if I am supposed to wait for something pop up. I guess not. I had to go find the program in my computer and run it. Great! The first account I download had no information. Not a great start. The second one I downloaded came in successfully. Great! Then the stats don’t download. So I downloaded a third one and this one everything seems to be fine…

Pros & Cons

Here are some quick hits.

PROS:

1) Interface: MSN web interface is incredibly difficult to use, so any alternative is a huge boon!

2) Basic Features: Many features found on Google’s Adwords editor is also found here

a. Uploading & Downloading of Campaigns/Adgroups/Bids

b. Download Statistics

c. Download into Excel

3) Advanced Features

d. Additional Keyword List Builder Tools

e. Geo-Targetting! No more targeting one Adgroup at a time!

CONS:

1) Switching Accounts (no easy way. Must reenter login information every time)

2) Stats don’t always download properly

3) One of my accounts won’t even download.

4) Lots of Crashes

Looks like the beta is still buggy, but since it is a beta I give MSN plenty of leeway. Hopefully MSN will work hard on this editor, improve the UI because I sure have a lot of money to spend if this thing works right! Will keep you posted.

Other Links.AdCenter Community

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual