We are proud to announce that the social search engine AfterVote is now known as Scour! This is a huge step forward in the evolution of this fine offering. Earlier this year AfterVote was acquired by ABCSearch, one of the largest pay-per-click search companies in the world. As a result of this acquisition, the product has much better backing for growth and quality and our offerings are now bigger and better with this move. The original core development team from Thinking Big is still deeply involved in Scour, but we have more resources, much better servers and a richer brain trust to improve the quality and accuracy of your daily information needs.
One of the most exciting changes with Scour is our reward-based searching, where you are rewarded for your searches! For every search, comment, and vote you contribute to the Scour community, you receive points. The basic premise is that Google, Yahoo and MSN are a few of the richest companies in the world based on people like you and me searching. They share none of this wealth – while we are willing to give back to the community for your time spent with us. You can redeem your points for VISA gift cards – 6500 points gets you $25 in rewards, so you get paid for what you already do! If you invite friends to use Scour, you can earn even more points (25% of each invited friend’s points) for sharing the site with others, making your points totals – and gift card values – rise even faster!
All you need to get the points benefits from Scour is to get a free account then just login and search to get free stuff!
While the general core of original tool is rooted in Scour there have been lots of changes and additional features added to Scour. We’re also working on bringing you some other features, like widgets to search Scour from NetVibes, PageFlakes, iGoogle, and more! If you really want to see a Scour gadget we haven’t created yet, let us know!
I’m sure you are saying - is this real? How is this possible? Well, Scour wants to share some of its success with users who make it all possible. It’s our way to thank you and give back something to people who use our site. There is no trick, no scheme, just searching for redeemable points to let you buy the stuff you want!
All of these changes to Aftervote can be seen now at the new, improved Scour.com. We only hope that you enjoy the new Scour as much as we do! Plus, with earning rewards for searching, what’s not to like?
Finally, as always, we love your feedback so drop us a note and let us know how we are doing.
26 responses so far ↓
1 Jim Smith // Jul 13, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Is there a limit for how many points I can collect per day? per month?
2 shod4n // Jul 14, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Yes, there are limits! The daily limit is IMHO 500 points
or what …
3 Federico // Jul 14, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Are there geographics limits? I mean, if I live in Italy can I get the VISA gift card?
4 shod4n // Jul 14, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Good question! Btw, I’m stuck at 1000 points
No more points counting … that’s a bad thing.
5 scouradmin // Jul 14, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Hi Federico,
In our terms and conditions, the only geographic restrictions are:
“…you are a legal resident of the country the Scour gift card will be mailed to.”
So if you’re a legal resident of your country, then you qualify for the Gift Card!
Thanks for using Scour!
-Simon
Scour Team Memeber
6 scouradmin // Jul 14, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hey shod4n,
We cap the amount of points a user can earn themselves at 500 per day to protect the network from any malicious or false activity. That is least 125 searches a day. However, there is not limit to how many friend points you an earn.
Hope this clears things up.
-Simon
Scour Team Member
7 Aaron // Jul 15, 2008 at 9:24 am
G’day Scour,
Seems like a very worthy concept.
A few suggestions:
1. Create a wikipedia entry. Wiki (and scour search results) currently returns info for Scour P2P, which, as is stated in the FAQ, is not related.
2. Search by keyboard
3. Access to my search history (or a way to link any search that I make to my Google Search History).
Cheers,
Aaron
8 Smytt // Jul 15, 2008 at 10:33 am
Hey.
Will you post a comment or something in the blog when yo have your first user withdraw his cash?
9 scouradmin // Jul 15, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for your suggestions Aaron, we have all of this in our roadmap. What specifically do you mean about “Search by keyword”?
Simon
Scour Team Member
10 scouradmin // Jul 15, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Hi Smytt,
We will definitely post to the blog when we get our first cashout.
Thanks for using Scour!
Simon
11 Aaron // Jul 16, 2008 at 11:46 am
G’day Simon,
Search by keyboard as per Google’s Experimental Labs search by keyboard feature which uses J/K keys to move between results, O or enter key to open the result, / key to move cursor to the search box, esc key to remove cursor from search box.
Cheers,
Aaron
12 Komal // Jul 17, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Its really good to hear that you have no geographical restriction on reward … Hope you keep up this feature in future .
13 Techie // Jul 18, 2008 at 3:27 am
Looks like Google’s trying the vote/comment stuff on their own search:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/google-continues-to-test-a-search-interface-that-looks-more-like-digg-every-day+/
14 andrew // Jul 22, 2008 at 4:10 am
I have a quesiton. How do you cashout? I’ve spend a long time trying to figure it out but contacting support@scour.com doesn’t work.
15 chandrasekhar // Jul 22, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Its really cool.Iam expecting scour to work on algorithms and get advanced than google and yahoo.iam trying on that.Performance wise iam expecting more coz need to improve more.
16 shahrir // Jul 24, 2008 at 6:38 am
i want to ask you, i’m from malaysia, did i get the visa card… can i get to redeem the point… thanks…
17 Zen Elements [Blog] | Graphic Design, Photography & Web Design Tutorials // Jul 25, 2008 at 1:17 am
[...] Scour is actually a later development from the previously named AfterVote (more can be read on that here). If AfterVote is anything to go by however, we might be seeing some great features popping up soon [...]
18 viju // Jul 25, 2008 at 5:23 am
nice site
19 Scour - Social Search - Influence Search Results // Jul 27, 2008 at 2:16 pm
[...] The Beginning of a New Era [...]
20 new comer // Jul 27, 2008 at 3:42 pm
how to generate the money. how can we cashout
21 nas // Jul 28, 2008 at 6:45 am
Goodday,
Scour is really a good site. But, i got stuck with 850 pts. stopped counting.
22 Engineer // Jul 28, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Anyone got Visa Gift card?
23 Mahesh Chand // Jul 28, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I like your search engine very much.
24 Shyam // Jul 30, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Hi, I was logged in from a public system earlier. There was a small strip at the bottom to vote and leave comments in every search result i click. But in this pc, it doesnt show up. Can you tell me how to have that?
25 Shyam // Jul 30, 2008 at 4:24 pm
And can we have a personalized bookmarks like igoogle?
26 Durai // Jul 30, 2008 at 7:38 pm
anyone received VSIA card from scour ?