The battle for voucher code territory continues with the news that search engine Ask Jeeves has introduced voucher code results on it’s SERPS. If a user, for example, searches for the likes of Argos, Jessops and Pizza Hut, they get shown on the right hand side voucher code results from a partnership wih Bview, “an online community whose mission is to help others find good businesses and save money”.

It’s an interesting move from Ask, but the initial implementation is fairly basic.

For example a search for Argos, Argos Vouchers, and Argos Discount Codes will generate a code result, but a search for a Sony TV voucher code (as that’s the offer currently being promoted from Argos) and you don’t get a result.

According to Hitwise apparently food vouchers are quite popular! So what happens with a search for just a “Pizza”?

Well, you can find a Pizza Hut voucher code under a search for “Pizza Hut” on ‘Jeeves but if you just want a “Cheap Pizza” then they don’t tell you they have a code on offer. Most surprising though is if you search for “Voucher Codes” you’d never actually know that Ask Jeeves have their own code system implemented.

Perhaps that will change in time?

From an affiliate perspective any movements in the voucher code arena are not always good news. It’s going to be tough as it is with the PR campaigns of the big voucher codes sites gearing up for Christmas activity. Already MVC are planning an offline promotion whilst Vouchercodes.co.uk seem to be becoming the Jordan/Katie Price of the VC world as they’re in every newspaper we pick up these days (e.g. The Sun).

The one good thing we’ve noticed about the Ask Jeeves codes is that you don’t need to click to reveal any of them, so a user searching for a code whilst at checkout may not feel the need to click around and reset their cookies? It’s a small crumb of hope if nothing else.

Obviously the natural question is can we expect the same from the likes of other search engines?

Given their desire to earn revenue and the fact that voucher codes are a huge online business, both here and abroad, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise to see a similar feature roll out. Something similar from Google or Bing before Christmas and that certainly could put a cat amongst the presents this year!

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