The battle of the search engines has taken another unusual twist following Microsoft's announcement that it will pay users for choosing its portal over Google and Yahoo.

This could increase pressure on dominant player Google, which already faces a similar threat from Yahoo's new SearchMonkey tool, unveiled earlier this month.

Consumers responding to search engine marketing with a purchase from a site accessed via Microsoft's Live Search portal will be eligible for a percentage refund on selected items.

However, experts remain sceptical of whether new changes are up to the mammoth task of changing ingrained user search engine habits.

"Persuading people to change search engines isn't easy, since people tend to stick with the one they're most comfortable with," he claimed.

Meanwhile the statistics reveal just how steep Google has made the climb for competitors. According to Comscore, Google was used 58.4 per cent of the time by surfers in December 2007.

However, if Yahoo and Microsoft do begin to compete it will pose search engine marketing companies with some interesting web strategy questions.

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