It looks like we’re not done with affinity search engines. Here’s the latest one I spotted, called Search and Share
Microsoft feeds the hungry if you download and install their browser:
Today, the Internet Explorer Team took over New York City’s Time Warner Center and San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza where local artists used food cans to create sculptures of the Empire State Building in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After the sculptures are completed, the cans will be donated.
It’s all part of our Browser for the Better campaign. Turns out that during the school year over 17 million U.S. children receive free or reduced-price breakfast and lunches at their schools. But once the school year is ends and summer begins, these children longer receive this benefit as they are no longer in school until the fall. In response, we are joining forces with Feeding America to help these children this summer.
For every completed download of Internet Explorer 8 through the Browser for the Better website, we will donate the financial equivalent of 8 meals to Feeding America’s network of 206 local food banks. These food banks supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year! The Browser for the Better campaign starts today and will run through Aug. 8, 2009.
Other companies have tried a form of affinity search marketing in the past, but now it appears that Microsoft is using it to grow their browser market share, which in turn, increases their search traffic. Here are a few posts I’ve written on the topic:
Everyclick.com – A UK-based Charity Search Engine
Dogpile.com searchers have raised $100,000 for the Search & Rescue Program, a philanthropic arm that donates money to animal-related charities. The program is on its way to reaching its goal of raising $1 million for the ASPCA by the end of 2009.
Related to my previous posts on affinity search engines (see here and here), Yahoo has decided to dabble in this space:
As part of Yahoo!’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month initiative, Yahoo! Search is announcing a new Infobar built on the SearchMonkey platform that will help Search users make donations to help find a cure for breast cancer without spending an extra dime. We teamed up with the non-profit organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure to build a SearchMonkey app that is displayed under Yahoo! Search results for dozens of popular shopping sites like Amazon, HP and REI.com. If users click “Shop” and complete a purchase, the affiliate commission will go directly to Susan G. Komen for the Cure — 7.5% of the purchase price, on average. And to encourage folks to use the enhancement, called Search for a Cause, Yahoo! will donate a dollar for every user that adds the application up to $25,000.
Other blog posts on affinity search engines:
Another Affinity Search Engine: Ecocho
Latest on Affinity Search Engines: Google pulls the plug on eco-friendly search engine Forestle
Everyclick.com – A UK-based Charity Search Engine
From Ars Technica: Google has ended its partnership with “green” search engine Forestle, saying that the site offered “incentives to click artificially on sponsored links.” Forestle says that it is attempting to “clarify” the issue and get the site reactivated, but for now, we’ll all have to put our environmentally-conscious searching on hold.
One of the most exciting developments we’ve had in the last year was the success of our inaugural Search and Give program where your queries helped to raise more than $250,000 for local schools and non-profits.
By signing up at http://www.searchandgive.com/, consumers can start donating one cent per search to more than 100,000 schools and 900,000 non-profit organizations worldwide every time they use the Live Search to find whatever interests them. People can also convert tickets they’ve earned playing games on Microsoft’s Live Search Club, at http://www.club.live.com/, into donations for those same schools or charities.
Here’s another affinity search engine, Ecocho, which basically take Google and Yahoo search feeds, gets a share of the advertising, and buys carbon offsets with some of that money.
See our previous post on affinity search engines to get some background about this space. Here’s the review from TechCrunch.
I’ve written extensively about charity affinity search engines. These are search engines that attract users because they give a portion of their revenues to charity. Another one just landed on my radar– Everyclick.com is a search engine that is powered by Ask.com for both their paid listings (advertisements) and normal search listings.
everyclick allocates 50% of its gross revenue to charity each month. Each active charity receives a proportion of that sum equivalent to the proportion in which its supporters use the website relative to the supporters of other active charities. The activity of everyclick website users who do not select a specific charity will benefit all active charities on a pro rata basis.
All website activity by users is measured by reference to the number of searches that website users make – so every click really does count!
So everyclick gives 50% of its gross revenues to a charity of your choice. This is important to note. Everyclick is not a non-profit– they keep 50% of the gross revenues for themselves. They recently signed a deal with SideStep.com, a travel search engine, so business must be good.
i’m is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. We’ve set no cap on the amount we’ll donate to each organization. The sky’s the limit.
So any time you have an i’m™ conversation using Windows Live Messenger, you help address the issues you feel most passionate about, including poverty, child protection, disease, and environmental degradation. It’s simple. All you have to do is join and start an instant messaging conversation. We’ll handle the donation.
We’ve seen Microsoft do something similar with search in the past. I’m a bit suprised that they’ve kept it going.
After my last post about FreePledge I decided that I needed to do a “charity-based affinity search engine” roundup. Two examples of these are Goodsearch, and Microsoft UK’s Click For A Cause experiment. I’ll start with some definitions and dive right in.
What are charity-based affinity search engines?
Internet search companies that share their paid search revenues with charities and/or non-profit organizations. These engines build a userbase simply by announcing that they share revenues with charities. People who want to support charities will opt to use these search engines over others.
Do these affinity search engines build their technology from scratch?
No, they are typically powered by one of the four major search engine companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask). Essentially these affinity search engines are “virtual” search engines. Everything is pretty much outsourced except for the marketing and branding.
What do Google, Yahoo, et al get out of it?
Incremental traffic and revenues. Search is a very competitive industry and the players are happy to sign distribution partnerships with companies that can drive incremental revenue. A good commercially-oriented partnership example would be Google’s relationship with AOL. Google recently renewed a contract with AOL to power the search functionality across AOL’s properties. This relationship is suggested to be worth over a billion dollars.
How do these affinity engines make money?
When users click on sponsored search results, advertisers pay a percentage to the primary search engine (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask). They will in turn offer the affinity engine a percentage of this, which will then be shared with the charities.
So let’s use the example of Goodsearch. I use Goodsearch because I like to support charities. I do a search and click on a sponsored listing. That advertiser whose link I clicked will pay Yahoo (which powers Goodsearch), and Yahoo will share a percentage with Goodsearch, which will share a percentage with a charity. To summarize, its an advertising-supported charity model.
What are the challenges?
These “virtual” search engines’ primary challenge is to grow and sustain a sizeable userbase. Other issues such as click fraud could cause more headaches down the road. This is an interesting space and I’m tracking it closely so I’ll report on any new findings I come across.
Related articles:
CNN Article on Goodsearch: Give to charity just by searching the Web
BBC Article on MS UK’s Click For A Cause: Charity gets cash for web clicks