Microsoft has announced a “back-to-school” promotion for using Live Search through the Live Search cashback portal. The promotion adds up to “double the cashback rewards on millions of products from hundreds of participating retailers.”

Example promotions include 36-percent off select shoes at Foot Locker, 18-percent off on Lenovo ThinkPad, and 30 percent off on The North Face Doubletrack backpacks.

Why is Microsoft doing this? Clearly to promote the engine and generate search queries. They have done this in the past and Microsoft may have realized some gains from those efforts.

Related Topics: Microsoft: Marketing

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