While perusing Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics – One Hour A Day (you can visit Avinash’s blog here on visit our blogroll), I stumbled upon a cool tool that I had used before, but had not touched for a while. I must admit that although I am rather refractory when it comes to using Microsoft products beyond the bearable minimum, its adCenter Labs is a pretty cool tool worth mentioning. If you are in search for intelligence in the field of competitive web usage behavior, Microsoft adCenter Labs may be something you should be looking into. Although it has been around for quite some time now, this powerful tool is pretty underutilized and therefore worth being put on the front burner, especially in tough times where the optimization of existing business processes is king.
Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs - the intelligence layer
AdCenter Labs uses search data to retrieve competitive and demographic information related to keywords. Imagine just for a second the huge amount of information collected in the process of people entering keywords into Google, MSN, Yahoo etc. You will certainly agree that each of these keywords represents an intention. For example, when you enter the keyword ‘Dell’ into Microsoft’s Live Search, chances are you are looking to buy a computer. You may be interested in learning more about the models that Dell has available, interested in learning more about the features of a specific model or may even be looking into comparing prices but in the end, your search for ‘Dell’ indicates a clear intention to buy a computer.
On the other hand, Microsoft collects a huge amount of personal data through its Microsoft Live ID network and is therefore able to link search queries to demographic data such as your age, sex, location, etc. If you have a Hotmail account, use Messenger or regularly visit MSNBC for example, your search Live Search queries are linked to your demographic data and therefore provide valuable insights into your preferences and web search behavior. What more is the search engine knows what keywords you have been entering before the Dell keyword and it knows what you will be entering afterward… doesn’t that provide for a nice potential to predict web behavior? Now don’t think that you are immune of this kind of data logging if you don’t use any of the aforementioned Microsoft websites or other tools. Ever been to Expedia? Bingo! Expedia is part of Microsoft’s Live ID network and so are other web services.
Don’t you think for a second that Microsoft is alone in collecting search data and matching it with demographic data. Biig brother in search land actually is… well you guessed it: Google! Google uses a similar approach.
How you can benefit for FREE
But what does this mean to you as an organization maintaining a website, doing business on the web or analyzing competition? Well, it would be of no use at all if the data was stored on Microsoft or Google servers and was being used for internal purposes only, yet here is the scoop: Google and Microsoft both provide FREE ACCESS to the intelligence buried in the matching between search data and demographic data, completely legally! Let me give you a couple of examples:
MS - Demographics prediction tool:
Would the following intelligence be of interest to you if you wanted to gather some basic demographics about who is looking up ‘Quebec investment’ on the web? What if you were an organization with a goal to attract investment? What if you were to launch an Internet marketing campaign and were looking for the right keywords to target your audience?
What if you were a private consultant selling life insurances? Would the following information help you in the design of an online marketing campaign? What if you could repeat your query with this tool, entering additional keywords and combination to find out more? Useful, not useful?
If you are a company using the internet to sell products or to generate leads, would you be interested in knowing what people were thinking before they entered your product in the search engine? What about gaining insights into their intentions after they entered a keyword that relates to your product? What about knowing what names pops up in their heads when searching for a specific product or service? Valuable intelligence when it comes to determine keywords for your own online campaigns or to adapting your ad copy to what you know goes through the heads of your target groups:
