Review: Scour – Get Paid to Search Google, Yahoo and Live
Posted by Jon Lee in Reviews, tags: google, live, MSN, review, scour, search-engine, social search, Yahoo
Scour describes itself as a social search engine and is able to search several search engines at once. Now this concept in itself isn’t new but Scour is interesting in that it lets users rate and comment on the search results in hopes of improving accuracy and relevancy through this information (the social aspect). What really makes it interesting is that it pays users for using it!
How it Works
When you enter a query on Scour, it will automatically search and returns results from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Results are amalgamated together in order of cumulative ranking and other user’s votes. There is support for searching the web, images as well as videos — again, from these same sources. If you wish, you can select to only see results from a single search engine. So if you prefer Google’s engine you can set it to rank Google results first and essentially have the same search engine except you’re earning points in the process which can be redeemed for Visa gift cards.
Here is a breakdown of how you can earn Scour points:
- 1 point for every search
- 2 point for rating a search result
- 3 points for commenting on a search result
- 200 bonus points for joining through this link
- 25% of points earned from your friends
6,500 points earns you a $25 Visa gift card which can be used anywhere Visa is accepted — essentially they’re offering cash. And the offer is open to residents of any country, not just the US or Canada!
Interface
Even if Scour didn’t have the point system to pay users to use it, I would probably still use it. It has a very clean and slick AJAX interface. Aside from searching from their site, they also offer a Firefox and Internet Explorer toolbar. However, I’m not a huge fan of toolbars since I think they take up too much space. For me, I use their Firefox Searchbar plug-in.
Limitations
It appears that Scour only looks at the top 10 results from each of the search engines to get a total of 30 results. In order to get more results, you’ll have to manually refine your search. There are some duplicate results, especially if a site is accessible through multiple domains (i.e. www and no-www).
Conclusion
Scour is a site that shows a lot of promise. It launched just a month ago and is quickly gaining popularity. It would be advantageous to join first and invite your friends to maximize potential profits. However, even if they didn’t offer Visa gift cards, it is still a great idea to use Scour as your search engine since it can take the best results from the top 3 search engines.
Join Scour now using this link to earn a bonus 200 points upon sign-up!
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