Blingo is a search engine with a twist. Each search on Blingo is also a chance to win a prize. And guess what? It's powered by Google so you get the same high-powered searches. I'm not into gambling, but this doesn't really smack of it at all. No personal information is given other than your email address. I recommend bookmarking the search page and use it every time.
This from AP:
TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD?
A handful of companies, however, are really giving users something for doing nothing by combining two of the most common reasons people use the Internet: searching and winning.
Exhibit A is the search engine Blingo.com, a site that recently entered Nielsen's list of the top ten visited gambling and sweepstakes destinations. Here you'll find the same search results that you'd get using Google, but with one key difference: Users who search at the times closest to secret, randomly selected milliseconds designated by the site each day will instantly earn a prize -- anything from a $5 gift certificate to a car to $20,000 in cash.
Better yet, it requires no personal information. All it takes is a mailing address -- after all, if you win something, they've got to have a place to send the goods, right?
"We're the white hat of this industry," says the company's founder, Frank Anderson of San Francisco.
Anderson, who previously helped launched the internet company iAmaze, came up with the idea to bring a prize element to search engines in 2004. Unlike most give-away sites, all Blingo's revenue comes from the advertisers who pay for the Google-generated small ads on the top and bottom of the pages.
The income, Anderson explained, is split between his company and Google (many sites, including AOL, use Google's search engines and split profits in the same way. Similar prize-offering search sites, like iWon.com, partner with other search engines in a similar manner).
In Blingo's case, a percentage of the company's profit share goes toward giveaways and prize money.
To date, he says, the site has given away close to a $1 million.
So, let's give it a whirl! Go to Blingo.com now!
