So we’ve been hearing all the hype about Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and any combination of the three you could possibly imagine. With the latest numbers showing MSN dwindling below 10% of share in the search market, everyone has waited in great anticipation to see how this giant will resurrect its share in the search world. The great question… how are they going to gain any ground on Google?!

The answer? PAY people to search on your engine! What a great plan. And the concept behind the plan is actually pretty ingenious. With MSN’s new Live Search Cashback program, the searcher is looking for a product online, and types in, for irony’s sake, iPod. In the list of paid search results, you get one with a “Live Search Cashback” icon. Clicking on this brings you to a list of iPod products, from which you choose the one you are looking for. The engine then lists a number of online retailers willing to sell you this iPod, and also listing the percentage the consumer will receive as a discount by buying through each retailer. And the best part for advertisers is that the whole thing is based on a CPA model, which means they only pay if the consumer actually clicks through and buys their product.

Sounds great right? Maybe in theory, but in practice this function is far from compelling, and as Danny Sullivan notes at Search Engine Land, it devolved quickly into a serious exercise in frustration. With no recommendations on products, poor search results, out-of-date information, unavailable products on retailer Web sites and prices that do not rival what you can get the product for at the original retailer, the plan provides little incentive for regular searches to flock to MSN over Google any time soon.

It remains to be seen when a search engine will get it right and start providing real rewards to searchers, but until then the consensus on this latest attempt to pull searches away from Google is a failure.

-Daniel Yomtobian, CEO