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For the last few years, Bing Cashback offered shoppers cash back rewards when they bought merchandise from some partners and advertisers on Microsoft's search engine. Most of the time these cash-back offers ranged between 2% and 10% of the price of the product. Now, however, Microsoft has decided to retire this feature. According to a post on the Bing blog, Microsoft "did not see the broad adoption that [it] had hoped for."

Bing Shopping, the comparison shopping tool that is part of Microsoft's new search engine, saw some impressive growth last month. According to Hitwise's Heather Dougherty, visits to Bing Shopping increased 169% last month and Bing is now the 4th most popular shopping comparison site in the US. Just last month, Bing was still in 8th place. Clearly, Microsoft's marketing muscle behind Bing.com and consumer interest in Microsoft's Double Cashback promotion brought a lot of new users to Bing Shopping in June.