Microsoft Doubles Cashback Incentives for Bing Search

11.08.2009
Microsoft kicked off a large Bing promotion today that's geared to attract the attention of the Internet's best bargain shoppers. The program itself is called , a function of the company's Bing search engine that--like so many extinct affiliate rewards programs of the dot-com era--gives you a monetary reward for using Microsoft's service.

This isn't some browser activity timer or other crazy stunt. Microsoft will actually refund a portion of your money when you make purchases after clicking on a sponsored link in a Bing search results page. And starting today, these reward percentages have been doubled!

It sounds like a complete scam, but numerous Web shoppers have been milking the system to wonderful results for the past many months--including yours truly (and I type this with no particular loyalty to the Bing search engine; I just like free money).

Here's how it works. Head on over to bing.com and click on the "extras" tab in the upper-right corner. From there, click "Cashback." Go through the necessary procedures of tying a new Cashback account to your Windows Live ID and head back to the main page of bing.com.

If you want to access a list of online stores that support Cashback the easy way, hit up and click on the "cashback stores" button on the left-hand side of the page. Voila. A "complete" listing of all the stores that support the Cashback system and the respective discount you'll get on your items--a discount in the form of a refund check that Microsoft sends you, not an instant discount applied to the purchasing process.