Web analytics has become something of a buzz word. You overhear mention of it on street corners, at parties, in the bathrooms of fashionable restaurants. Trend setters refer to it in stage whispers. Why? What does it matter? If you're paying for search.

Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions & adCenter Analytics will be exhibiting at the eMetics Marketing Optimisation Summit from 4th to 7th May 2008 Join us at Palace Hotel in San Francisco by registering here: eMtetrics Summit Registration Other.

Did you know that Microsoft adCenter recently launched its own accreditation program? Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert. Check out our new adExcellence.

The Search Engine Strategies )SES( conference is next week in New York, NY. There will be Microsoft folks speaking at a couple of the sessions, so stop by and see us... Wednesday, March 19th : 5:30-6:45pm - Searcher Behavior Research Update Pavan Lee,.

Just wanted to give everyone a quick heads-up that this blog will be moving to a new location next week, so please keep your eye out - we'll post the new URL here so you can come check it out and let us know what you think. We'll keep you posted... Thanks, Carolyn,

As discussed in an introduction post , Microsoft adLab showcases some of the innovative tools and technologies our researchers are helping to build, providing advertisers and publishers with the very best ways to connect with consumers. Today, I'll single out just two from the Keywords & Content category on the adLab website . The new Entity Analysis tool includes data for both the English and French language.

Last week we talked about Getting Started With adCenter Analytics and implementing analytics tags on your website. Today, we'll show you how to run some simple reports to track how many visitors you have had to your site, and how many pages they viewed. When you log into adCenter , click on the Analytics Tab , and then Profiles and you will see the list of sites you have created profiles for.

The Search Engine Strategies )SES( conference is next week in New York, NY. There will be Microsoft folks speaking at a couple of the sessions, so stop by and see us... Wednesday, March 19th : 5:30-6:45pm - Searcher Behavior Research Update Pavan Lee, Research Manager, Microsoft Thursday, March 20th : 12:45-1:45pm - Meet the Crawlers Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager, Live Search Webmaster Center Also check out our sponsored session , Tues.

This week, Gabe Ingalls gives us some insight into using Exact Match keyword functionality in your PPC campaigns. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team W hile an uncovered light bulb can illuminate an entire room, a laser can highlight and draw attention to a single item in that room. Exact match can do the same for the keywords within your adCenter account. Building on the account optimisation techniques that Simone focused on in her negative keywords post ,

adCenter Analytics is a free web analytics tool that helps you easily understand web site user engagement and online marketing campaign performance. You can track audience behaviour from click to conversion, segment data by age and gender or simply run a report to see how many visitors have accessed your site, where they came from and what content they looked at. You can be up and running with adCenter Analytics is just Four Simple Steps!

We're pleased to announce a recent upgrade to adCenter Analytics )formerly known as "Project Gatineau"(. Since we launched the Beta at the end of October , we've been listening to our customer's feedback and working hard to incorporate any requests and suggestions. One of the pieces of feedback we received was about the $5 adCenter sign up fee. Moving forward, we've now waived that fee for Analytics customers.

Today, Simone tells us how to banish unwanted impressions forever! Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team A dding negative keywords to your search campaign is one of the easiest optimisations you can do and it's free! Negative keywords help to prevent your ad from showing up in search queries unrelated to your website when you bid on broad or phrase match. Negative keywords can increase your click through rate )CTR(,

Last month we announced that Microsoft will become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network )WSJDN(. Today, we're here to share some tips for how to get more quality clicks from our contextual network, which includes WSJ.com , Barrons.com , Marketwatch.com , as well as MSN Money , CBNC.com , EDGAR Online , FOX Sports , MSN Entertainment , and other partner sites . Microsoft Content Ads Beta , available in the U.S.,

Today - Nick Drew, our Search Research Manager, shares some insights into searcher attitudes in the UK. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team L ast year, we shared with you some UK research that we'd conducted about the quality of click-throughs from search engines.

One question we see in community discussion forums is "How do I contact adCenter Support?" The adCenter Support team can help you with questions ranging from bidding and budgeting to targeting and editorial.

We've just announced at Search Engine Strategies in London, that adCenter customers in the UK are welcome to sign up and take the adExcellence exam. adExcellence is a new source of helpful educational materials now available to marketers. Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert.

Today, we have Craig Brown from our Creative Services Team who'll try and iron out that age-old dilemma of which kind of keywords to choose... Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team T he title of this posting is a bit of a misnomer...'Brand vs Generic' suggests a battle between two opposing forces but in reality an effective search campaign on adCenter needs the right mix of both, as they fulfil very specific but equally important functions and are co-dependent.

We're going to SMX and we'd like to meet with you! Would you like to get a sneak peek at new products while you're in Santa Clara for SMX ? Want to give us feedback on adCenter - directly to our engineering team? Then we'd like to get together with you. We're specifically interested in meeting with advertisers who are small agencies )to talk about multiple account management( and advertisers with high-volumes of keywords who'd like to test new campaign management tools.

Are you interested in helping to test new adCenter products or tools before they're widely available? If so, we've launched a new interest form where you can sign up to participate in future Beta or Pilot Programs with adCenter. These programs help us gather your feedback on new products early in the development cycle. Becoming a Beta or Pilot Customer offers you: Early access to future adCenter tools.

The SMX West conference is next week )Feb. 26-28( in Santa Clara, CA. Here's a list of different sessions where Microsoft will be represented. We hope to see you there! Tuesday, Feb. 26 10:30am-11:45am - Raju Malhotra: Search 3.0: The Blended Search Revolution 10:30am-11:45am - Mary Berk: Decrypting Quality Scores 1:15pm-2:45pm - Henry Hall: Search 3.0: Video, Images & Blended Results 3:15pm-4:30pm - Kevin Hagwell: Search 3.