Web Earnings

After the announcement of the MSN Beta Adcenter (With new and improved functionality!), MSN have introduced their Keyword Prediction Tool - which gives the number of searches over the past 12 months and breakdowns of age and gender. I’m not sure what they base the demographic data on, but at first glance it’s clear that data is skewed to the US. In the Adlabs section, there are also a few other handy things such as the Keyword Mutation Tool and the online Commercial Intention Tool. This is the first time I’ve discovered these and althoough it isn’t exactly groundbreaking, it shows that MSN are starting to think forward and develop new tools and apps which is what they’ll need to do if they ever want to pose any sort of a challenge to the mighty G!

The Google Maps team are charging ahead with the functionality of the maps by adding traffic reports. It has a long way to go before it changes from a novelty to a useful service but new Google developments always get me a bit excited! Currently this is only rolled out across a few US cities but has made me think about the steps Google is taking to bring it’s services together.

I’ve always thought that it was odd that they would develop tolls and applications that seemed unrelated but as time goes on it all seems to add up as the relationships between these applications tie together. Google Earth was a fun tool on it’s own, but together with Google Local, Google Weather, Google Transit and Google Traffic reports, combined with mobile technology, you’ve got a pretty powerful tool. This has made me think about other things they could add - Google Home Search, Holidays, basically anything that has a geographic element, and it is this merging of the online and offline world that will see rapid growth over the next couple of years.

The same thing is happening with their computer applications, as Google Docs and Spreadsheets develops, will they be adding more? Will the heavily rumored G-Drive finally come into existence?