Microsoft Launches New Pay Per Click Program Microsoft's Steve Ballmer recently announced Microsoft's new adCenter at the Seventh Annual MSN Strategic Account Summit. The new advertising platform provides ads for all of Microsoft's online properties including MSN, Windows Live, Office Live, Office Online, and Xbox.com.

One of the most important features is the ability to specifically target the audience for your ads by geographical location, day of the week, time of day (morning, afternoon, or night), age and gender. These new features make it immediately competitive and attractive for those using Google and Yahoo Pay Per Click service.

AdCenter includes a new keyword generation tool, and campaign reporting tools. The adCenter also provides tools to control the budget of your ad campaign, and has mechanisms in place to prevent invalid clicks.

One note, it appears you can only sign up and access the system using their browser, Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. Click here to access.

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MSN has rolled out the beta version of their new search engine that will eventually replace MSN Search. One cool feature is search results in a scroll bar so you don't have to click through page after page. This should benefit websites that don't appear on the first page. Give it a spin - Windows Live - Beta.

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Conversion Rates...as important as it is to regularly monitor, analyze and act on your website traffic and Pay Per Click reports, no one I know is in business to generate traffic on their website. Is your traffic converting to new customers? Think about how to convert a site visitor to either a known prospect or customer.

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Inbound Link Strategy....there seems to be evidence that "white listed" directories which link to your site carry much more weight in affecting your site's ranking, especially in Google. These would include such sites as DMOZ (Open Directory Project), Yahoo, and domains with extensions of .gov and .edu.

The days of massive numbers of inbound links from "link farms" as a strategy for high ranking are long over.

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There is a new search engine on the scene....ACCOONA. They are making some news with their new proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology. Time will tell if they create a viable market share, but a few more competitors to the major search engines will keep them on their toes and benefit all.

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The latest Internet Explorer 7.0 is in beta testing and can be downloaded here.

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Of course, my favorite browser (and ever increasing in market share) Firefox 1.5 is available here.

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