You have to love a name like “Add-in”. What marketing guru was overpaid to come up with that name….at any rate, it’s a really cool tool. You can do some pretty impressive keyword research using adCenter data and reviewing it in Excel 2007. It won’t be too long before Google and Yahoo! copy this (or so my opinion goes) and they won’t tie it to a spreadsheet program requirement that costs money. If you want to try it, you’ll need an adCenter account (search for coupons to save $$) and Excel 2007 (download the free trial if you don’t have it).
adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 – Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions
Microsoft very quickly responded and fixed the issue of PPC ads from Google showing in their search results. Kudos to MS for this quick fix. It seems Google changed the way they display ads and MS was sleeping and didn’t catch it.
Live Search Webmaster Center Blog : Listing Google Ads In Live Search (D’oh!)
Google does have nofollow on their ads, yet Microsoft indexes them anyway. This has got to mess up CTR and I wonder how Google is handling it?
Raven SEO Tools: Live Search Is Returning Google AdWords Ads In Their Natural Search Results
MSN announced August 22nd that they would be releasing a beta of their answer to Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo! Site Explorer. It’s late fall now and as promised, it appears that the beta will be rolling out slowly. Crossing our fingers here that we are included. If you are interested, click the link below to sign up. Remember that beta means not everything works and you are on your own if something goes amuck. On the other hand, you will have a voice in making the tool better.
Live Search : Our New Webmaster Portal and an Invitation to the Private Beta
Microsoft has just updated and released their new Live Search 411 service. Toll free access to search information seems to be a hot new item that everyone is fighting to be #1 in. Initial tests from various bloggers puts Microsoft in the lead over Google’s service. Microsoft produced more relevant and desirable results in an easier to follow format.
Store your private health data with Microsoft, a company known for security issues. Yes, there is one born every minute. Just how stupid are people? I guess very stupid. This is a major project release and Microsoft is only the first out of the gate with it. This is a gold mine of data that Microsoft, and whoever they sell the data to, will use to better market their products. So go ahead. Give away all of your personal information and do their work for them. And what do you get in return? Ever hear of file folders people?
It was expected and happened on cue. MSN has updated. How is your site doing today?
And Microsoft jumps into second place bypassing Yahoo! as Yahoo! eats Gate’s dust. In a $6 billion buyout, MSN is now edging on Google as the top online ad empire. Read more from the Associated Press…
Digg, a popular community-based popularity site, will be serving up Microsoft text and graphic ads on it’s site now. A blow to Google in bragging rights only, it’s not going to hurt Google’s bank account much. It may be a good gain for Microsoft as it’s reported that earlier tests hit the mark better than Google could. Digg users are different than the norm making serving ads a bit more challengine.
Is it really true this time? Will Microsoft really support sitemaps this time. It seems they might really mean it this time. Adding a reference to your sitemaps file will allow Miscrosoft to find your sitemaps file and they promise to use it. Currently Google and Yahoo! support sitemaps and even allow you to ping them when it’s updated. Microsoft has no ping support to help push your content out faster (at least that’s the theory), but perhaps one day Microsoft will catch on.