The iWon site has been relaunched with a new look and with the intention to give away more prizes. Barry Diller’s IAC revamps iWon.com from BusinessWeek details most of the changes, which include more “games, more prizes and plans to add social networking functions.” In addition, iWon will contain a search toolbar that links search traffic to Ask.com.

This is significant, because with Ask.com trying to increase market share and not really succeeding, IAC is looking for other ways to increase share. Microsoft saw a large spike this year when it did giveaways, so IAC might be hoping for the same.

Compete: Microsoft Gaining Searches; Live Search Club Giveaway Working? explains more about how the Live Search Club drove traffic to Live.com. It also has more background on giveaways other search providers have tried over the years since iWon got the ball rolling back in 1999.

After iWon’s initial success in building huge amounts of traffic, the site dropped off. IAC seems to hope the new site might pull them back in with more to win.

From the BusinessWeek article:

He said too few users were winning prizes on the old site, so the new version is designed to give away millions of dollars each year to thousands of users.

“It’s like being in Vegas, only without the risk,” he said.

Here is the new version of the iWon home page:

Here is the old one:

Related Topics: Ask: Other | Ask: Promotions

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz