Wabbadabba offers prizes as you search

The Wabbadabba search engine offers daily prizes

A new search engine has launched in the UK that lets users win prizes as they search.

Wabbadabba is powered by Yahoo and will award up to 15 prizes at random times throughout the day, ranging from Amazon vouchers to TV sets.

Every time a user enters a search on the site, they have chance of winning one of the prizes even if they do not click on any of the links.

"Wabbadabba finally proves that there is such a thing as a free lunch," said Ben Akin-Smith, head of innovation at Wabbadabba.

"We aim to add a bit of fun to a task that has become a part of every day life for most people who use a computer either at work or at home. The average person typically does 10 to 12 searches a day, so that is a lot of chances to win."

The site offers only a standard web search with an option for international or UK-only results. Akin-Smith told vnunet.com that the company will expand the platform to include other common features such as image search.

No pre-registration is required to search with Wabbadabba, and contact details are only entered when a prize is won in order for it to be delivered.

However, users who register can invite friends to join, which increases the chance of receiving a prize. Every time a friend wins a prize so does the user who invited them.

Wabbadabba generates turnover by receiving money from the search results providers.

Although the engine currently gets its results solely from Yahoo, Akin-Smith said that the company would consider combining results from other search engines such as Ask and Google as long it could maintain the same level of simplicity for users.

Prizes are limited to three per household per month. The vast majority are £5 and £10 Amazon vouchers, but the company insisted that higher value prizes will be given out.

Future prizes could also include vouchers for retailers such as Play.com, iTunes and Argos.

Akin-Smith added that he looks forward to the day when the company can " drive up to someone's house with a Porsche Boxster as a prize".