Microsoft has finally brought its Bing Rewards program to Windows Phone, letting users earn points toward gift cards and other benefits by searching the Web.
The program had previously been available on the desktop, and launched for Android and iOS in January. Until now, Windows Phone users had been left out.
As Windows Phone Central points out, Windows Phone 8.1 is now listed on the Bing Rewards for mobile page. And sure enough, a couple of Bing searches on a Lumia 1520 yielded one credit.
How far do those points go? A $3 Amazon gift card costs 340 credits, and you earn one credit for every two Bing searches, up to 10 credits per day. That means you’d have to search Bing 20 times per day for 34 days to earn the gift card, though Microsoft occasionally sweetens the pot, as with a recent deal that provided 100GB of SkyDrive storage for a year for 100 credits.
Perhaps that’s not enough incentive for iOS or Android users to switch, but considering that Bing is the default search engine on Windows Phone, and is tied into voice search through Cortana, it might not be that hard to rack up some points just through normal Windows Phone usage.
Keep in mind that you still have to sign up for Bing Rewards to start earning those points. To do so, head to the Bing Rewards Website. And while Windows Phone 8.1 has yet to roll out to Windows Phones en masse, here’s how to install it on your WP8 device today.