I am not affiliated with Moola.com in any way; I think their site is a joke and a complete waste of time. However, it seems that they have partnered with Google to offer incentivized search results on Google's search engine... using the Google custom search engine program (but there doesn't seem to be any customization). http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/moola_launch.php http://search.moola.com Every time you search, you earn more money that you can bet/cash out. I thought Google was strongly against this - incentivized search? Can anyone now partner with them, make a custom search engine, share revenue with users, and start printing money?
I don't think there is any direct affiliation with Google other than they are using Google's coop custom search. http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Interesting; how do they monetize search then? I read somewhere about custom search providers being able to share in search revenue, but maybe this isn't the case.
I think I read something about this also where some of the revenue when to your local school or something. But I never heard of you getting half the revenue. Its an invitation for click fraud
Ok it appears Moola is doing what LakeCounty said, and using the Google Co-op search which anyone can do. I've done it on Wordpress Blogs, scrapped the default WP search and replaced it with Co-op so i can earn revenue from searches. Moola has taken it a step further and used a revenue sharing model. A person does a search, then clicks on a sites Adsense and Moola gets paid by Google through the co-op. This money goes in to a prize pool and a percentage gets given back to the users as a prize. Clever way to generate revenue and encourage people to use their search.
Well, in theory Moola is giving away their own money to random users of the site. It's a bit like DP giving away 50% of their Adsense revenue to us for using this forum. Moola isn't offering incentive based payouts for clicking on links, that would void Googles TOS. If they based it on the more links you click, the better your chances i could see them having the plug pulled on them real fast.
Couldn't I just start a search engine for charity then, donate half the proceeds to charity, and tell users to search there to help raise money? I am really confused because I thought Google was against this, but maybe the co-op search is a back door in to that.
I think it's a gray area, you can tell people to use your site that's just advertising. You can also tell people to use your site because you make money when they so. Where you would start to go bad is offering an incentive to click, Moola doesn't. They offer an incentive to use their site, and by clicking on anything this won't increase your chances of obtaining any financial advantge. It's definately a fine line.
OK so there is a difference between an incentive to search and an incentive to click. That makes sense. Is there any way to check and see what the official Google policy on this is?