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Source:CenterNetworks

Back in May, Microsoft launched their "live search cashback" which basically helps you earn rewards (paid via PayPal) for items you buy when you enter the merchant’s site via Microsoft. While most believed that it would help Microsoft gain important search market share and also get people to convert from Google to Microsoft for general searching. I believed that while it might help with the market share, the bottom line is that deal hunters would be the only ones to really take advantage of the service and that it would generate more of a financial loss overall.

You see, us deal hunters are a special bunch. We will pick at that chicken bone until there’s nothing left, then sell the bone using a discount code. Over the years I’ve joked with friends about my "deal hunter levels" and have promoted friends to different levels depending on the deals they find. Not all of us can afford to pay market prices.

So what’s happened with Live Search Cashback recently? Well, the deal hunters have found a way to get 35% rewards on purchases on eBay. By doing certain searches on the Live Cashback search engine, there are links in the sponsored area for 35% off purchases at eBay. There’s even a step-by-step walkthrough of how to get the 35%. It gets even more interesting because now people are setting up auctions for cash, selling for over the face value of the cash, just to get the maximum 35% cashback.

The thread on Fatwallet has nearly 2,000 replies in the last 24 hours and SlickDeals’ thread has almost 3,000 replies and 250,000 pageviews.

The net result is I can pretty much guarantee the search numbers for June for Microsoft will be massive. Alone, I’ve completed over 150 searches over the past 24 hours alone looking for the goodies. Let’s see how Microsoft spins this boost in searches when the industry reports surface.

Here’s where it gets tricky - many of the forum posts are related to the terms and conditions related to the cashback search. I sure hope that Microsoft makes good on all of these rebates through this eBay deal. Trust me, you don’t want to piss off the deal hunters.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under search, microsoft, Insights, cashback, Fatwallet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.