The Sour Deal of Scour and Why I'm Moving On

Well, it's official. Scour has changed or rather dropped their rewards program and suckered quite a few people into working with them to improve their search engine (a job) without any pay or rewards. Well, sorry to say, but I'm no longer one of those suckers.

Here's what the search engine had to say:


Subject: Scour has changed its Reward Program
Dear theinsanewriter,

Over the past year, Scour has received a lot of feedback regarding the rewards program and the direction of Scour. Based on user suggestions, we have decided to discontinue the Scour Points Rewards program for the time being and instead focus on using our resources to improve the search experience on Scour. We are confident that you will be very happy with the changes and updates to come.

If you would like to read more about this change, please visit our Scour Blog: http://blog.scour.com/2009/09/01/scour-focuses-on-search-and-features/

Thank you,

Team Scour

Of course I understand that times are tough thanks to the economy, but giving users something to get excited over and then never paying up is not the way to do business -at least not honestly anyway. And I'm really not sure why users would be happy over those changes. Of course if you have accumulated points with the search engine, I wouldn't expect anything from them and it's just best to chock it up or blame me if you need to towards a waste of our time.

Really I could stay with Scour, but to be honest, I find Google (despite my ill tendencies towards their ad program) to be a much better search engine even without the enticing rewards. So it's time I said goodbye to the no-rewards program (ironically you have to have permission from them to delete your account.) and move on. Hey, we live and we learn about better ways to become successful online. It's like John Chow said, never put all your eggs in one basket. There are other and better fish in the sea or maybe it's the ocean. hmmm.

Has Scour Gone Sour?

Well folks, it looks like the search program Scour, may have gone sour. As I've noted in previous posts this new search engine allows you to search online and make points for a free Visa Gift Card. So far as of today I have 772, but I haven't did much searching lately. However, at the time I was testing it's waters and still am. Still, now it looks like the program may have just skipped out on it's promises, leaving those who are accumulating points nothing but false hopes.

My points have disappeared in the upper right-hand corner and so far there's nothing about why and any increase in points when I do search. However, they do have referral links and banners still up. Hmmm. I'll keep you posted when I know more, but until then, don't bother signing up for this program unless you don't mind wasting your time or you think Scour's search engine is great on its own.

Scouring the world

A while back I told you about a new search engine called, Scour. I'm still using it and still loving it. However, my points haven't been racking up as well as I'd hoped, but it has nothing to do with Scour. Lately I've been spending a lot of time away from my laptop, so researching with the search engine has been rare. Still, so far to date I have 551 points and 139 entries for their montly contest. Not too bad at all if you ask me. Slowly but surely I'm making my way to that $50 Visa card!

How Scour's Doing For Me

I've been using Scour.com for a little over a week now. So far I've found the search engine to be........... not bad at all. I have 241 points and found that the search engine really came in handy one night when I was working on my novel. Could I have made more points in the week since I started using scour? Yes. But my excuse is I haven't been online as much to do so.

The points really might not seem like a lot, but freebies add up and for something I already do every day, I'm glad I took advantage of this program. I can't wait to get my first $50 pre-paid visa card from these guys just for searching. I'll keep you informed on how things go with this one!