It’s day three of the Scour launch, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to answer some questions we’ve gotten from new searchers…
Do I have to download the toolbar and give my personal info just to search?
Nope! Of course we’d love to have you sign up, but the search engine is free and open to anyone. If the pop-up asking you to sign up comes up, just close that window, and you can search as you normally would. In order to reward you points, you do have to sign up so we can give you credit for your searches, but all we need is an email address… nothing fancy!
Can I use Scour and get rewarded even if I don’t live in the US?
Yes you can! Our policy just states that as long as you are a legal resident of the country the gift card is delivered to you are good to go!
Is Scour going to work with Firefox and Safari?
Yes… we are working on a Firefox 3.0-compatible toolbar and are going to have it up and running very soon. We’re also working on a Mac version of the toolbar for all our Apple users that will work with Safari and Firefox.
Are the points worth it?
Think about it… Google, Yahoo and MSN make millions every year based on what their users do on a daily basis: search. We feel the success should be shared with the users that make it happen. So if you search on Scour, you get money back! And while 6500 points might seem like a lot for $25, it really works out well! For example, if one Scour member only searched three times a day, and so did the 25 friends they invited to Scour, the Scour member would make $100 a year or more, just from doing what they do for free on Google every day.
Is there a max amount of points I can make per day?
Yes, 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 at least 125 searches a day. However, there is no limit to how many friend points you can earn.
Can the points system be scammed? What’s to stop people from abusing the system?
While we hope all of our users are honest searchers, we know that we are going to get the occassional scammer… We have a patent-pending fraud detection technology that proactively seeks out these attempts to scam the system preventing fraud before it even becomes a problem. This ensures rogue users do not interfere with the rewards process and more importantly the quality of the search results you get on Scour.
Have any questions for the Scour team? Check out our FAQ section: http://www.scour.com/faq/ or we would be happy to answer them. Leave comments here on the blog and we’ll be sure to answer them as best we can! Also, look for a more in-depth post in the next couple of days on how we are keeping Scour secure, private and spam/fraud free. Thanks again to all our new fans!
-Dan Yomtobian, CEO, Scour.com
30 responses so far ↓
1 nikssy // Jul 17, 2008 at 7:36 pm
you might wanna look into your scour points calculator. Maybe you’ve developed it before deciding to limit the daily points to 500…
Because I input the following data:
125 searches and 3 friends = 1260 USD
500 searches and 3 friends = 5040 USD
1000 searches and 3 friends = 10 080 USD
And that’s worong. as you said “you COULD earn”. The maximum amount that one COULD earn… or one COULD earn up to, with 3 firends should be:
125 searches by 4 points each by 365 days - personal ponits. 132 500 personal points a year
1/4 of 132 500 = 33 000 points per year coming from one friend.
from three friends - 99 000 points.
that means the maximum points I could earn are 132 500 + 99 000 = 231 500 pts
this is 925 USD
Something’s wrong.
2 nikssy // Jul 17, 2008 at 7:38 pm
oh and forgot… since there’s a daily limit and the maximum for 3 friends is 925… the should be for 500 and 1000 and 5000 0000 searches. Cause once one makes 500 pts it doesn’t matter how much more he searches.
Am I right
3 Richie // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Thanks for the update, guys. Really appreciate it. I had a few questions in mind.
1. How do you tell the difference between a “scammer” and a loyal searcher that uses the engine a lot? I myself am a huge searcher, mainly because I like to learn about new things, and just search in general. I wouldn’t want to be seen as scamming the system, and somehow getting banned for searching too much.
2. How do you cope with the spam on comments? I’ve seen so much of it, it’s becoming annoying seeing people trying to get points the dirty way! When I “Report It”, does it get handled immediately? Here’s a bit of what it looks like:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2rxi4k5.png
And that’s just on a few pages. There are a lot more.
Only two questions I have for now. Thanks for reading. Keep up the good work! I’m loving it.
4 scouradmin // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Hey Richie,
1. We have internal check in place to ensure legitimate searchers are not banned. We look at a whole lot more than just search count.
2. We have automated as well as manual comment reviews, so sooner or later an inappropriate comment will be removed. The comments in screen shot you sent have all been removed.
Thank you for making Scour your new home, we will continue to make it bigger and better!
-Simon
Scour Team Member
5 Mohit // Jul 18, 2008 at 8:25 am
I wanted to know if the points can be claimed outside US like in India(non US citizen)?
As such i have not found any thing regarding the payment locations.
6 Mobile Answers // Jul 18, 2008 at 10:06 am
I agree with Richie, there needs to be more transparency. For example I’m now using Scour a lot and I’d hate to see myself labelled as an abuser just because the amount of searches I’m making. So far everything’s been fine, but I think you should notify users if they are banned or anything (obviously I have no idea what policy you guys have on this, but I would hope that you would contact users first).
Also you need a report feature for results, so that we can report results as being spam or parked landing pages. Yahoo has a nasty habit of ranking parked pages high and this is degrading the results.
Also I find a lot of repeat sites appearing in the results. For example when you pull site results from Yahoo and Google - it lists certain domains twice - because your system treats http://www.cnet.com as a different site from cnet.com or http://www.cnet.com/
You need to correct that.
7 sankeerth // Jul 18, 2008 at 11:31 am
the tips are superb.
it is useful.
8 Glitchzero // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I agree whole heartedly on the Parked Landing Pages issue. To weed these out of the results would be beneficial to everyone.
As for the idea of accidentally being labeled an abuser, I would imagine that the checks and balances that are in place would be looking for randomness in searches, number of searches per minute, things like that. No matter how random someone is on the internet, they will still show some kind of continuity.
Am I wrong?
9 basant Punera // Jul 19, 2008 at 11:50 am
Thanks for the update, guys. Really appreciate it. I had a few questions in mind.
How do you tell the difference between a “scammer” and a loyal searcher that uses the engine a lot? I myself am a huge searcher, mainly because I like to learn about new things, and just search in general. I wouldn’t want to be seen as scamming the system, and somehow getting banned for searching too much.
10 Goutam // Jul 20, 2008 at 7:07 am
Hi,
If I am not log in always on scour.com but I usually use scour to search something in my personal computer, will I earn points?
11 Ed // Jul 21, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I could not get your support email address to work.
I set up my account with a myway.com email address and would no like to change it to a yahoo.com email address so that I can invite my friends. How do I do that?
12 kapalic // Jul 22, 2008 at 12:33 pm
While I was going to use scour at my second day, I can’t log-in or search. It’s showing “network error!”
What’s the problem? Do u sometime make the site down for indevisual users?
13 murali // Jul 22, 2008 at 5:06 pm
good site
14 Powerpets // Jul 23, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Above comments are all valid - I’ve already sent several suggestions through feedback.
Personally I’d get more trust in the system if the # of points for daily searches was decreased, but since you’re the social search engine, increase those points on the comments and rating system instead. Especially comments since those are harder to fake than just writing a script to run automated searches every so often all day long.
I do hope all works out, as most of the funds we generate and our “friends” acquired through powerpets.com generate will end up going towards shelters for abused and abandoned animals.
The site does have a ton of room for potential expansion. I’m full of feedback and will send it through as former feedbacks get implemented (hey, how about a “coming soon” or “to-do list” page so we can see what’s already scheduled and don’t send you the same feedback 20 times) — and a “Feedback I sent” page, so my clutterbrain doesn’t send you the same stuff twice
15 vasanth // Jul 24, 2008 at 9:27 am
how can i get the Gift card after earning the 6500 points???
16 Internet Monitoring Software // Jul 24, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’ve got a question regarding payment - do you only pay out using the special Visa card? Or can you get paid by any other method? Thanks
17 Seekmoneylab // Jul 25, 2008 at 5:48 am
I read about Visa Gift Card on Visa.com. It’s not reloadable, so is that mean we will receive new card every time we ask for cash out?
How can I withdraw cash fund from Visa Gift Card?
I think it’s better to use online payment like paypal or moneybooker or whatever. Just my $.02
18 Peter Davis // Jul 25, 2008 at 6:05 pm
If you wish to keep scour spam-free, why are you sending out spam to advertise your site? I just received two such emails:
Return-Path:
Received: from murder ([unix socket])
by uracil.salk.edu (Cyrus v2.2.12-Invoca-RPM-2.2.12-3.RHEL4.1) with LMTPA;
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:09:30 -0700
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
Received: from www1.scour.com (www1.scour.com [67.29.139.229])
by emex1.salk.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A2B274154
for #######; Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:09:30 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by www1.scour.com (Postfix, from userid 33)
id 73DF976D80; Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:26:07 -0700 (PDT)
To: ########
Subject: Scour.com invite from Piyush
From: Piyush
Reply-To: piyushtripathi.sgpgi@gmail.com
Message-Id:
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:26:07 -0700 (PDT)
Hey,
Did you hear about Scour? It is the next gen search engine with Google/Yahoo/MSN results and user comments all on one page. Best of all we get paid for using it by earning points with every search, comment and vote. The points are redeemable for Visa gift cards! It’s like earning credit card or airline points just for searching! Hit the link below to join for free and we will both get points!
http://scour.com/invite/piyushtripathi/
I know you’ll like it!
- Piyush
19 Ashraf // Jul 26, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I have also similar queries like Mohit.
Can non-US citizen claim for gift after earning the 6500 points?
20 Simon // Jul 26, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I tried to sent a email to jobs@scour but it bounces how do i contact you guys about work?
Simon
21 Ashraf // Jul 27, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Yesterday I send msg asking a question, but it is not showing. Anyway, my asking was for non US citizen. Can they also get paid for the earned points? Or this service or social search engine is only for US citizens?
22 Eric // Jul 27, 2008 at 1:05 pm
How soon until the Firefox 3 toolbar is done?
23 Niti Bhatia // Jul 28, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Hi,
Seems that search engine is little slow as compared to Google. But I stil prefer it as I get points !!!!
Niti
24 Niti Bhatia // Jul 28, 2008 at 3:28 pm
It is very interesting that most of the questions are related to points and money only……I have another one ……Do you pay only to USA residents or can we get paid in any city/country.
25 lddgnz // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Can the points be claimed by someone who’s not the citizen of US ? I have seen couple of similar queries posted but no answer so far by the scour team !!
26 scouradmin // Jul 30, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Hi all… the Visa gift card is the only way to get paid right now, you can use it just like any other card, so it acts like cash. We may look into something like paypal down the line, so thanks for that suggestion.
Anyone from any country is eligible for the gift cards, as long as you are a resident of the country the card is shipped to.
27 priscilla // Aug 4, 2008 at 11:52 am
good and useful site.
28 kinix // Aug 8, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Are we allowed to have more than 1 account in the same household? I have an account and my sister (living in the same house) wants an account too.
29 jeetu // Aug 17, 2008 at 1:27 pm
hi Team,
Is there a customer care team which can help me resolve a few queries so that I could start telling all my friends about its benifits
30 chandra // Aug 17, 2008 at 4:53 pm
in what way i can get money through paypal or gift card what ‘ mean by visa gift card