Blingo
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Blingo is a front-end for the Google search engine that awards prizes to searchers at randomly chosen times. Blingo makes its money from advertisements powered by Google, which are displayed with each search. However, Blingo states that clicking on advertisements is not necessary to win, and clicking advertisements will not improve a user's chance of winning.
[edit] Operation
Blingo routes all its search queries through the Google and Picsearch search engines, so except for the possibility of winning a prize, searching with Blingo is essentially the same as searching through Google or Picsearch themselves.
There is also a networking aspect built into the service. If a user recruits a friend, and the friend wins, the user will receive the same prize. Some have expressed concerns about such online referral schemes, citing the deluge of spam prompted by Gratis Internet's ubiquitous FreeIpod.com.
Though according to a December 2004 article in PC Magazine Blingo search results were once supplied by Gigablast, currently Blingo draws upon Google for its results. Blingo's image searching service is powered by Picsearch, which is a filtered image search engine. Picsearch's search results are generally more thoroughly screened than those offered by Google Image Search, and as such, Blingo's image search is generally more workplace and family friendly than Google image results.
Blingo collects relatively minimal personal information at signup, but does require standard shipping information for users who win prizes. Because of its nature as a middleman between users and the search engines which it draws results from, the privacy of Blingo users is determined not just by Blingo's privacy policy, but by the policies of the search engines which it queries. Whether Blingo tracks user searches and user activity on a "per-account" basis has not been made clear.
As of July 2, 2006, Blingo was purchased by sweepstakes company Publishers Clearing House. The company is giving out larger prizes, including cars and big screen TVs.
[edit] How to Win
Blingo chooses random times during each day to award prizes. If a user performs a search at one of those times, Blingo awards the user with a prize. Only the first 10 searches of the day per user count towards winning a prize. If two users search on the same second that a prize is given out, the user closest to the prize-winning second wins. Nonsense search terms and repeated searches for the same word are ineligible to win.
The Blingo website suggests in their advertising that the best way to win is not to try to win, but to use the search engine like you would any other search engine. They claim that most people win prizes after several months of use, seemingly out of the blue. [1] However, since the odds of winning are a matter of random chance, any ten searches valid in a row would have equal chances for winning, whether Blingo is used regularly after that point or not.
Once a person wins, a special "You Win!" page shows up and asks the user to input some personal information, for delivery purposes. At that point, if the winning user was referred to Blingo by a friend, the referrer will receive a message that he or she won the same prize. The winning user would have to be logged into the system to track this.
Only residents of the US are eligible to win prizes, and US tax law requires that all prize winnings be reported to the IRS.
