CogBlog

This new Google Trends tool is really fascinating. It allows you to compare relative search volume over time for any given phrase with a chart similar to what they use in Google Finance. You can even compare two phrases to each other.

I love how you can see what I assume are interest peaks around daylight savings time for the phrase "time clocks".

The cities/regions relative search interest figures are interesting too, but you definitely need to read the definition to understand what it is really showing.

I noticed when I logged into AdCenter that the site security certificate doesn't seem to be configured properly. You'll see a little warning message that "there is a problem with the site's security certificate". The warning message in IE states that the certificate is from a valid issuing authority, and that the certificate date is valid, but that it doesn't match the site you are on.

When you look at the certificate, it is issued for help.msn.com, not adcenter.msn.com. Doesn't it seem like Microsoft itself could get something like that right? I mean, if it were my site I'm pretty sure I'd drop the couple hundred dollars and just get a new certificate for adcenter. And, Microsoft has their own certificate Issuing Authority, so it's just a matter of setting it up properly. How could you spend millions on a project like AdCenter, and not deal with a tiny little issue like your security certificate that has such a big impact?

If I add MSN adcenter as a trusted site in my IE preferences, that will take care of the problem...for me anyway. It seems there are still serious issues if you are using the MSN secure page conversion tracking code.

A couple weeks ago we reached a milestone with Google AdWords. COGBOX has delivered over three million leads to clients through AdWords. To celebrate, Google sent us a Google-Branded mini-fridge. Best of all, it comes with a car adapter. Finally, I've got a place to keep a cold one handy for that morning commute.

Of course, I love schwagg. The lighted plastic goose from GoTo (now YahooSM) is still one of my favorite things in the office. What do you suppose we'll get when we hit five million?

So I've been playing around with the MSN AdCenter today. There are some interesting features, along with a few bugs it seems. Of course, the first thing that you'll notice if you're a mac user is that you're not welcome. AdCenter requires IE6+.

The charts of demographic data for each keyword are a unique feature of AdCenter. You can, for any given keyword, look at traffic trends over time and see a wealth, age, and gender breakdown. Apparently there are no men under the age of 25 looking for "time clocks", but there are no women looking for the same between the ages fo 36-50.

My favorite little chart was the Lifestyle chart where searchers for a given keyword are broken into descriptive "categories" that are meant to tell you something about them. Here are some of the categories of people searching for the phrase "time clocks":

Bourgeouis Prosperity
Career and Family
Sophisticated Singles
Routine Service Workers
Comfortable Retirement
Low Income Elders
Industrious Blue Collar
Smokestack Survivors
Metropolitan Strugglers
Rural Inheritance

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be happy with my category no matter which one it is. Metropolitan Strugglers? Are those the Bourgeouis Prosperities who've not quite made it yet? And when they say "Rural Inheritance" do they mean some kind of inheritors of a cultural legacy of rural living, or actual people living on inherited property in the countryside?