• by joe.h , Bob Heyman , October 23, 2006

This month's spotlight falls on new developments in search marketing tools.

CampaignTracker from Semphonic provides pay-per-click and competitive reporting about SEM campaigns. PPC Reports are built using campaign data extracted from search engines. Report data is then consolidated into a single Excel Report Set. Competitive Reports are built by scanning Google and Yahoo for all the sites that are shown organically or in the paid listing for a given list of search terms, and include who is buying what, activities of individual competitors and reports on competitor ad copy.

Enquisite has launched a major update to its Search Metrics Reporting Tool, an analytics system that uses a passive objective data culling. According to CEO Richard Zwicky, this has a twofold advantage: because it gathers data passively, it doesn't penalize users, as it does not spam search engines; and it allows users to drill down through organic and PPC data ranked under phrase, search engine, country, region, city or zip code.

Inceptor is offering a range of tools tailored to small businesses, larger companies and interactive agencies. All of these allow bidding to be managed in a rules-based environment. The company also offers Inceptor Word of Net, a Visibility and Ranking Reporting solution.

Omniture is one of several companies moving laterally into the search space with a suite of tools. Its product, called Search Center, offers a standard range of bid management options as well as competitor analysis reporting. Among other features are click-fraud analysis and tight integration with Omniture's Web analytics package.

WebSideStory rounded out its ActiveMarketingSuite by launching WesSideStory Bid, a new keyword management solution, along with the latest version of its Web analytics product, HBX Analytics 3.0. This, along with the move by Omniture, indicates a trend for analytics providers to deliver a comprehensive package for their online customers.

Eyeblaster has announced a new suite of tools for search called eb.search. To power eb.search, Eyeblaster formed an alliance with The Technology Works, whose suite of tools had only been available in Europe and Asia. In the North American market and in Australia, eb.search can be used either by integrating Eyeblaster's digital ad server or by using eb.search as a stand-alone system. In other markets, eb.search is only available as an integrated offering.