Cashback working well for Microsoft Live Search

With e-commerce on a rise and more and more people buying online, everyone still looks at avenues for saving money. We all hunt for online retailers who can offer us the product of our choice at the least possible cost. It was last year that Microsoft realized this and came out with a Cashback program. Microsoft saw opportunity in this buying pattern and offered to actually pay buyers who used their search engine to buy products they found.



New data out from Nielsen shows a 615% unique audience growth in Microsoft Live Shopping Search over the past year. Even more impressive: it was one of only two Top Ten Shopping Search Providers to grow their audience from April 2008 to April 2009.

Search to Cash conversion ratio
Though 615% unique audience growth may seem huge, all this is of no use unless the searches are turning into referral traffic for the retailers. As per data shown below Google and Yahoo still lead Microsoft Live on percent of visits and percent of dollar share. Microsoft Live can surely claim more efficiency than any other provider on a dollar per visitor basis, driving 8 percent of visits but 12 percent of dollars.



Having said this it is important note that shopping related activity constitutes only about 2 percent of total search activity. So, though Microsoft Live may show huge improvement in Shopping Search, it may not be good enough to close the gap to Google and Yahoo.

Source : Nielsen Wire