Microsoft

Microsoft has made the decision to ax Live Search Product Upload, a tool retailers could use to get their products into Microsoft's search database.

"Thank you for your interest in the product upload beta. Regrettably, we are discontinuing this program," Microsoft said in a message posted on the product's Web site. "Merchants located in the United States should consider participating in Live Search Cashback--an advertising program which combines the power of Live Search with a comparison shopping engine to bring consumers some of the best deals on the web."

Microsoft confirmed it is ending the product, which had been in beta testing.

"Results from the beta proved that the service was redundant with our other shopping assets," Microsoft said in a statement. "To improve the performance for merchants, we've combined product search and Cashback and we are decommissioning product upload in favor of the new integrated Cashback shopping experience."

The software maker said that retailers don't have to enroll in the Cashback program to make its product search engine, given that it also crawls the Web. However, it said "we encourage merchants to join Cashback as it enables them to provide a structured feed for their product search listings."

Microsoft announced the move to combine product search and Live Search Cashback last week.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it has combined its product search engine with its Live Search Cashback, a product that gives users a rebate on certain purchases made directly after using Live Search.

"The new site unifies Live Search Products (the shopping vertical within Live Search) and Cashback to make it easier for you to research, compare products, and save money," Microsoft said in a blog posting.

The move also reflects the fact that on the back end, Microsoft has shifted the underlying engine for Cashback over from technology from its Jellyfish acquisition and onto the primary Live Search platform. The company launched the Cashback effort nearly a year ago in an effort to try and boost its overall slice of the search market as well as within the lucrative commerce segment.

Microsoft's changes to the product search feature come ahead of a broader revamp of Live Search due later this year. Microsoft is currently testing the new search, code-named Kumo, with its own employees. However, as we noted earlier this week, Microsoft still has work to do to grow its search share, even inside its own walls.

Live Search still badly trails both Google and Yahoo in the search market. For March, Microsoft had 10.3 percent of the U.S. search market, according to Nielsen Online, compared with 64.2 percent for Google and 15.8 percent for Yahoo. Also of note, Microsoft's year-over-year search growth was less than 1 percent compared with 16 percent growth for the market as a whole.

Microsoft said that it, in fact, won't be able to restart a Black Friday promotion with HP.com that many were unable to take advantage of because of glitches with the Live Search Cashback program.

In a blog posting on Friday, Microsoft said that, although it is working to give those who ordered products their promised 40 percent discount, those who were not able to place an order are, essentially, out of luck.

"There have been lots of questions on whether the 40 percent off HP promotion on Black Friday will be restarted," Microsoft said in the posting. "While we were hoping to be able to do that, we are sorry to report that it will not be restarted."

A Microsoft representative had indicated earlier this week that the promotion would be restarted, although a statement on Tuesday indicated that might not occur.

While this is bad for bargain hunters, it may end up being worse for Microsoft, which is trying to use the Live Search Cashback program as a way to build awareness and loyalty for its search product.

Microsoft is still trying to sort things out following a glitch on Friday that prevented people from getting a promised 40 percent cash back on purchases made on HP.com via Microsoft's Live Search Cashback program.

A crush of traffic led to a glitch that apparently led to a number of problems. Some shoppers were credited with only 3 percent cash back, rather than the promised 40 percent. Microsoft has said all those who made purchases through Live Search during the Black Friday promotion would get the higher rebate.

But some folks were unable to make their purchase at all on Friday. A Microsoft spokesperson told CNET News in a statement Monday that the HP promotion would be restarted in the coming days. However, that statement appears to have been premature.

In a blog post late on Tuesday, the software maker offered a much more vague statement.

"We're working actively to determine next steps for any specific HP promotions," according to the post, which was attributed to Rajat Taneja, Microsoft's general manager of worldwide commercial search. "We regret that we don't have more specific details at this time, but we can point customers to other Live Search cashback merchants with great deals on HP products, including eBay, which is currently offering 20 percent cashback."

The glitch was an unfortunate blow to Microsoft, shifting what could have been a banner day for Live Search cashback into another online black eye for the company.

Microsoft on Monday apologized for glitches on its Live Search Cashback site, which frustrated online shoppers looking to scoop up Black Friday deals.

Amid heavy volume on Friday, consumers encountered a range of problems from site sluggishness to seeing the wrong amount of cash back show up in their accounts.

The problem was particularly acute with shoppers who were looking to take advantage of a promotion with Hewlett-Packard that offered buyers a 40 percent discount when visiting HP.com through Microsoft's Live Search Cashback. Some shoppers, however, reported seeing only a 3 percent cash back amount posted to their account.

"We deeply regret customer inconvenience with respect to the outage," Microsoft said in a statement provided to CNET News. "The spike in traffic in combination with a technical glitch led to the outage. The promotion will restart in the next day or so. Again, we apologize for our customers' inconvenience."

A Microsoft representative said the company is in the process of going back to make sure the proper cash back amount is credited.

Live Search Cashback was launched in May as a way for Microsoft to try to boost its share of commerce-related search queries. Instead of taking in revenue on a pay-per-click model, Microsoft gets advertisers to agree to pay in the form of a certain percentage of any resulting sale. For now, anyway, Microsoft is giving that entire amount back to consumers as "cash back."

Separately, Microsoft said on Monday that some users will be able to get cash back instantly on eBay purchases, as opposed to having to wait the 60 days that is standard on Live Cashback.

Microsoft is getting more aggressive with Live Search Cashback, a program that offers price cuts for those who buy products found with the company's search engine, touting a 25 percent rebate for items purchased through eBay.

eBay has long been a Cashback partner, but the company went to the trouble of promoting the deal on its Live Search blog Thursday. Kok Waii Wong, Microsoft's group product manager for Live Search, announced the 25 percent eBay rebate on the blog. There are some conditions, though, including a $200 cashback limit and payment through PayPal only. It's offered only in the United States.

That rebate rate is significantly higher than the rebate from most stores, though a few come close, such as Footlocker.com with a 20 percent rebate.

Microsoft also offers a program called SearchPerks that awards points for searching; points later can be redeemed for prizes. The programs are part of its effort to bring more attention to its search engine and compete better against Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft's Cashback program, which offers people discounts on products purchased through the company's Live search engine, is attracting visitors, research firm Hitwise said Friday.

The Cashback program is attracting attention of visitors to Microsoft's search sites, Hitwise reported.

(Credit: Hitwise)

"We see an interesting trend where the share of visits to the Cashback section of MSN Live is increasing," said research director Heather Dougherty on the company's blog. "Eleven weeks ago, MSN Cashback represented 3.75 percent of the traffic to Live.com and grew to 6.29 percent last week. This rise in Cashback's traffic underscores the interest in the program, which is likely to be getting a boost from shoppers looking to save money and stretch their budgets given the current economic climate."

While Cashback accounts for an increasing fraction of Microsoft searches, though, the company's overall search share has stayed level at about 5.4 percent in July, August, and September, Hitwise said. Over that period, Yahoo dropped from 18.7 percent to 18.1 percent, while Google increased from 70.8 percent to 71.2 percent.

The Cashback site on its own ranked 12th in search engine traffic for the week ending September 27, Dougherty said.

Paying people to search, in effect, has its limits, though. One analyst said Microsoft's newer SearchPerks incentive, which gives points for searching that can be redeemed for prizes, smacks of desperation and could hurt the company's reputation. (Also, it requires Internet Explorer to sign up.)

Microsoft, though, appears more worried about getting brand recognition in search in the first place than about having that brand hurt. "We know we have some challenges with the brand and perception. Simple awareness is still a challenge for us," said spokeswoman Whitney Burk earlier. And paying people to search can work: "Over the long-term these programs have changed people's behavior."

Microsoft's latest effort to get people to use its search service is something called SearchPerks, which gives people points for using the search engine that can later be redeemed for prizes.

Users who agree to download a small program to track their usage get one "ticket" per day for every Live Search query, up to 25 per day. The program runs through April, at which point users can "cash in" the tickets that they get and trade them in for prizes or donate them to a charity.

It's the latest in a series of financial incentive-related projects from Redmond, joining such efforts as Live Search Club, Search and Give, and Live Search Cashback, a program Microsoft introduced in May.

The latest project doesn't just require one to use Microsoft's search engine, however. At least for now, it also requires Microsoft's browser (Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher) as well as a Windows PC. Microsoft said those latter restrictions are not necessarily permanent.

"At this time, SearchPerks is a limited promotion, though we remain open to expending availability of the promotion to different browsers and operating systems based on consumer interest," Microsoft said.

There's also the broader question of what it says about Live Search overall that Microsoft has to keep coming up with gimmicks to get people to try it. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft has continued to struggle to make inroads on Google in overall share, promotions notwithstanding. According to figures recently released by ComScore, Google increased its share of the U.S. search market in August--it's at 63 percent--while Yahoo and Microsoft both slipped a bit, to 19.6 percent and 8.3 percent respectively.

In an interview, Live Search Senior Director Frederick Savoye said that the new business models, as Microsoft likes to refer to these programs, are just one part of a three-prong strategy that includes continued improvements in core search as well as in vertical search, or "simplifying key tasks" in Microsoft parlance.

Microsoft has seen mixed results with its incentive programs. Live Search Club, for example, gave Microsoft an initial boost, but its gains appear to be directly tied to its level of incentives. With Live Search Cashback, Microsoft said it has seen some advertisers boost their Live Search spend. eBay, in particular, is spending 50 percent more on Live Search thanks to Cashback, which Microsoft says offers significantly higher conversion rates than traditional search.