Update: 10: 22 pm Eastern time - Microsoft send over a statement from a spokesperson:
Over the last few years, the Microsoft Rewards program has regularly evolved to reflect our growth and expansion. We evaluate every change for consistency and fairness, tuning the methods and frequency through which our members can earn points. Whether searching with Bing, browsing with Edge, playing on Xbox, or making purchases in the Microsoft store, we know our members take delight in the added incentive the Microsoft Rewards program offers. We aim to grow in ways that continue to provide value to our members, and we eagerly monitor feedback to ensure satisfaction. We appreciate the enthusiasm and loyalty of our Microsoft Rewards members and remain excited for the program’s future.
Original story - The Microsoft Rewards program has gone through a lot of changes over the years. It first started out with the name Bing Rewards, but got a name change to its current branding in 2016. In 2018, the Xbox Live Rewards program was merged with Microsoft Rewards.
However, the basic concept of the program has remained the same. People could earn points by filling out surveys, searching for content on Bing, and more and get points, which could be turned into digital gift cards, sweepstakes entries, or helping charities.
Now it looks like Microsoft is making some changes to its Rewards program. As reported by TrueAchievements, many users are reporting that the ability to earn points daily in the program by searching for content in Microsoft's Edge web browser has been eliminated. The number of daily points that could be earned was 20 in the US and 12 points in other markets.
The report also says that other users have found that normal search activities in Rewards have added a kind of "cool down" period. Previously, users could go through the normal search activities (without using Edge) pretty quickly every day. Now they claim that Microsoft is making people wait several seconds between each search attempt to get their points.
A few days ago, there were some other unconfirmed reports that Microsoft sent out a message stating it was planning to shut down the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox consoles, in favor of the new Rewards hub in the Xbox user interface. As of this writing, there's been no confirmation of this reported change from other reliable sources.
In any case, it does look like Microsoft is making some small changes to how Microsoft Rewards works by ditching the Edge search feature. We have emailed Microsoft to see if they can provide any further information.
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