14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's attempt to “buy” searches is resonating with consumers, confirms online metrics analysis company Nielsen. Live Search Cashback has apparently driven a 615% audience increase for MSN/Windows Live Shopping Search in a single year. The over 600% growth in eyeballs crowding to Live Search Cashback comes from Nielsen's comparison of the audience metrics for April 2008 and April 2009. Microsoft accounts by far for the most consistent boost in online shoppers according to the Nielsen Unique Audience for Shopping Search / April 08 - April 09.
“With technology derived through Microsoft’s acquisition of Jellyfish.com, the Cashback program immediately took off, driving 140 percent increase in traffic to MSN/Windows Live Shopping Search from the previous month. As many wondered if the novelty would quickly wear off, the Live Shopping Search audience grew 615 percent over the 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,” revealed Jon Stewart, research director, Technology & Search, Nielsen Online.
Microsoft itself said in April 2009 that Live Search Cashback was growing exponentially. At that time, the Redmond company confirmed that its Cashback program for Live Search was counting in excess of 5 million page views per day. The views translate into no less than 10,000 purchases every day, the software giant reveals (via LiveSide). Live Search Cashback is a program designed to offer online shoppers cash incentives for the products they acquire from Cashback partners by first searching for them via Live Search.
“Of course, none of this matters unless the searches are turning into referral traffic for the retailers. And since we know that people search for products outside of the shopping-specific area of the search engines, I thought I’d take a look at how effective each search engine is in referring traffic. One obvious finding is that most Internet Retailers can claim their highest percentage of traffic from Google and Yahoo! Interestingly though, MSN/Windows Live Search can claim more efficiency than any other provider on a dollar per visitor basis, driving 8 percent of visits but 12 percent of dollars to major e-commerce sites during Q1,” Stewart added.
