Google finally launched it’s much anticipated web based spreadsheet application. It’s a powerful online interface with various features like:
- Sharing document with other users
- Multiple people can view and edit a sheet at a time (full collaboration)
- Add ‘tabs’ or ‘workbooks’
- We could also use a traditional ‘vlookup’ command with no problems

No need to worry about your data being lost on a hard drive, or local folder. Google makes it available anywhere, and hosts the data in their systems. The new application also has handy options to export in .csv, XLS and HTML formats, making it cross compatible

Looks like lot more ‘Office’ like offerings and integration is on the horizon, especially after this recent announcement of Google Spreadsheet from Google Labs. We expect Google to provide a way to generate live Adowrd reports in our formats/predefined templates using Google Spreadsheets! Watchout Microsoft, they are definately pitching a tent in your front-yard.

If you are running an AdSense campaign you must be aware of what Search Arbitrage is. For those who are not, just like in economics this is a search technique(s) for: “the process of buying the product in one market with purpose to sale it in the other market to profit from the price difference between the two markets.”

SO let’s break it down: What are those markets in our search business anyway? They are Adwords, Yahoo!, MSN (and other PPC engines) and don;t forget the other component AdSense, YPN, (and other publishers networks). When you bid on cheap words in AdWords and place the kind of content to match the AdSense ads that bid on expensive words, you are using the ‘Search Arbitrage effect’ and your site can be considered as Made for Adsense(MFA) site.

The internet society hates MFA sites because they spam search results and raise advertising costs for those companies that do not resell traffic. What makes the internet society like MFA sites is the good example and idea of how easily money could be made.

In my opinion there is not much “good” from the MFE sites that contain hundreds of SE optimized pages with only one phrase and lots of ads. But, some rare sites ‘balance’ on the verge of content-rich site and MFA could be of some interest and use. If the site not only provides you with related ads but also with some initial content then it could be useful or worthy, and the ads will rather be considered as links to other related resources - rather then annoying advertising trash.

Since last few months Yahoo! people are constantly working toward improving user experience by providing new features to their users. Yahoo! has launched new version of MyWeb with additional features to connect the people with same interests. You can bookmark you favorite subject and get connected to the community with similar interest as well as search for others using Tag Finder. Now it’s possible to export MyWeb pages various browser compatible formats. Overall now it’s easy to save and share your bookmarks with MyWeb!

When you lead business online it’s quite important to provide sufficient traffic to your site. The fastest and most reliable way of doing that to my mind is sponsored listings in online advertising programmes like Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and so on.

If you are already a Google advertiser or only plan on becoming then you must concern about how to make a campaign set up process easier and faster as well as how to improve account performance. There is a feature in Google AdWords that can provide the possibility of achieving better advertising results – dynamic keyword insertion. There is very few if not no information from Google on dynamic keyword insertion feature though advertisers use it widely.

So, how does this function looks like and how should it be used? Dynamic keyword insertion lets to have keywords from the list of ones you bid on to be inserted into ads’ title or text based on the user’s query. Lets say that you bid on the following terms: sea food, sushi, sushi bar. When using dynamic insertion your ad title may use whichever of these three words depending on what keyword the user entered. So if the user typed Best Sushi Bar into his browser, your ad title will say Sushi Bar and if the query was Cheap Sea Food the title will be Sea Food.

To dynamically insert keywords into your ad text use specific string that looks like:

{keyword: Default Keyword}

Default Keyword parameter is needed in case the term from your keyword list that matches with the user query is longer then 25 symbols (so that it will be default keyword that will be displayed when 25 characters limit is acceeded).

There are several results that may be achieved by using dynamically inserted keywords:

· Capitalization of the first word in the phrase

{Keyword: default keyword}

· Capitalization of all words in the phrase

{KeyWord: default keyword}

· Inserting keywords into a phrase

Phrase beginning {keyword: default keyword}

or

{keyword: default keyword} phrase ending

It is easy to set up dynamic keyword insertion but don’t it is also obvious that without proper observation of a keyword list you may get into troubles making your ads sound ridiculous or irrelevant. Always plan your campaign and make the ads work for you the best possible way!

After the launch of site explorer Yahoo has also added new links for webmaster to connect with Yahoo! Search. Recently added links to Yahoo! resources provides list of various resources provided by Yahoo! Search. It seems like Yahoo! Search team is constantly working to make easier for webmasters. Complete information about this can be obtained from http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000309.html.

Searching your favorite topic in blogs becomes much easier due to a new search feature Blogs&Feeds search launched by Ask.com. From now all you need to remember to find up-to-date, rich information on the blog-o-sphere is to visit ask.com.

Personally I like the Blogs&Feeds engine very much. It has several handy features that distinguish it from other engines of the ‘blog’ friendly kind. The search can be conducted by date, popularity or relevance and in addition sorted by posts, feeds or news. One can preview the last 5 posts from the blog without clicking on the link just rolling the mouse over (I love this!). And it is also quite easy either to subscribe for the blog or to make a post.

In one word Blogs&Feeds is the engine many of us were waiting for to make information gathering and processing from our favorite blogs much easier.

MSN continues to win its share of advertising market. MSN AdLabs first announced in January was made available for everyone.

What can be found there that distinguish AdLabs from AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing Tools? 11 of demo-tools for different areas of advertising (Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting, Emerging Markets) have been launched and 7 of demos are reported to come soon.

Those of demos that might be of particular interest to advertisers are:

- Search Volume Seasonality Forecast - tool shows how frequently was a word search during different seasons of the year

- Search Funnel - tool shows what people typically search before and after a particular query

- Demographic prediction - tool predicts user age, gender and other demographic information

- Local Ads on PC - tool to detect customers location and deliver most relevant ads

Of course the tools listed above are not the only demos available in MSN AdLabs. You could visit the AdCenter and test all the rest yourself.