1) Blingo: Owned by The Publisher’s Clearing House, the search engine Blingo is randomly giving away prizes to those who search on their site. They have even made it viral by providing a duplicate prize to the person who referred the winner.

2) AGLOCO: The core concept of this search engine is that it is a co-operative. Users who sign up and use its proprietary “Viewbar” to search the net will get paid per hour and will be treated like a shareholder by getting a chunk of the company’s profits. Members will also get paid for referrals to friends; the crucial viral marketing method. This is not a new concept, in fact AGLOCO was created by a couple founders of the similar but long dead AllAdvantage search company. Apparently the founders that started AGLOCO feel there is a better chance the second time around.

So why the title “… Advertisers Beware!”?

Each of these search properties are built on the basis of making money off you, their advertiser. In fact, that is their entire business model – attract the users and the advertisers will have no choice but to come and pay well for visibility. My concern is that users who sign up to get paid to search may not be the target market for the average advertiser. After all, logically some of these users are on the search engine just to make an easy buck and are not necessarily interested in serious searching. Lower quality viewers aside, there is bound to be a market here worth tagging but I expect advertising on any of these properties should be carefully thought through before proceeding.

If you do decide to go ahead and advertise on these two sites (or any others like them) I strongly recommend setting up unique landing pages for each search engine and monitoring the average time for each visit using your traffic statistics. If you find a very low conversion rate and that the majority of users stay a very short time (less than 5 seconds) you had better turn tail and run – unless the cost of advertising is so low it doesn’t matter.

Caveat Emptor

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Ross Dunn is the CEO and founder of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc., an SEO firm that has been providing expert services since 1997. Rosss considerable experience in the world of search has made him a respected writer for countless publications and an SEO consultant for small business and Fortune 500 web properties.

Casinos have been using this operant conditioning gimmick for decades, except there seems to be little (or no) risk at Blingo. Heck, they even use Google’s search technology. And while you’re finding junk on the Web, you could possibly win some junk from it.

Blingo’s been smart about something else, too. Searchers can only win on their first 10 searches of the day, so they don’t wear the skin off their typing fingers.

Like other search engines, Blingo makes money through sponsored search results and uses that money to provide the prizes. No registration is required to win and winners are selected by random winning times.

To date, says the website, Blingo has given away 18,262 prizes. There is a limit of two prizes per household per month.

Hey! How come every time I hit ‘Enter’ I start drooling?

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“Each search you do on www.blingo.com gives you a chance to win a prize. Users don’t have to pay anything, register or provide personal information, and they will be immediately told if and what they won.

Prizes range from movie tickets to Amazon.com certificates, Netflix subscriptions, digital cameras or iPods.”

Ok everyone, eyes down for a full house.

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Visitors to the Blingo website search for words or phrases, just like on other popular search engines, but at Blingo each search is also a chance to instantly win prizes like a Canon digital camera, a one-year subscription to Netflix, an Amazon.com gift certificate, or a music CD. There’s no user registration, no spam, no annoying pop-up ads, and no catch to win — just instant search, instant entry, and instant gratification.

“Google really raised the bar for search quality. Now everybody is looking for new and compelling ways to differentiate the search experience,” explained Blingo co-founder and CEO Frank Anderson. “Sweepstakes and contests have always been enormously popular with consumers, even though there are typically some strings attached. But with Blingo we’ve eliminated all of the usual nonsense. There are no strings, no catches, and no hassles — just great search and thousands of winners.”

Thousands of Prizes Every Month

Currently in Beta testing, the Blingo site is offering hundreds of prizes in December and will begin offering thousands every month when Beta testing is complete. Prizes will change frequently and will include popular consumer electronics, gift certificates, movies, music, and more.

Blingo was founded by two successful Internet entrepreneurs and colleagues, Frank Anderson and Rob Davis. Together they helped launch iAmaze, an Internet company acquired by AOL in 2000. Blingo, backed by venture capital investor Athlon Ventures (whose investors include prominent athletes such as NBA All-Star Tim Duncan and NFL All-Pro Brian Urlacher), is pursuing a similar business model to other leading search providers. The company receives revenue from advertiser-sponsored links correlated to specific search queries, and then gives a portion of the revenue back to users in the form of prizes.

“Blingo does not need to re-invent the search wheel because we can provide a great search experience via partnerships,” said Rob Davis, Blingo co-founder and Vice President of Engineering. “Our search quality is very similar to other search engines. Our challenge is to deliver rewards in the most consumer-friendly manner possible. Now users can choose to ‘search and find’ with other search engines — or ‘search, find, and possibly win’ with Blingo. And there’s no better way to search for holiday gift ideas this month — search on Blingo and you may win a gift of your own.”

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