• by Aaron Goldman , Op-Ed Contributor, December 14, 2007

Microsoft just unveiled what might be the most impactful innovation to search marketers in the past couple years. It has released the Keyword Services Platform -- essentially an upgrade to adCenter Labs with wicked Excel functionality. I can't do all the features justice in a blog post but let me just say that it provides (free) tools to search marketers the likes of which we haven't seen since the old Overture keyword selector tool (and that old thing pales in comparison to the rich data available here.)

KSP is an add-in to Excel 2007 that allows you to take a list of keywords (or your domain) and extract suggested keywords, traffic numbers, demo and geo info, category/vertical info, average CPC, rank, and much more. It has features for you to create pivot tables, charts, etc. I strongly encourage everyone to contact their MSN rep to get a demo.

Microsoft should be applauded for its commitment to transparency. While it may not have the biggest share of the search market, by providing useful tools like this, it will continue to increase its share of mind within the search marketing community.

Let's hope the other bigs take a page out of the Microsoft book and open up their kimonos a bit. Everyone stands to benefit.