Are there any SEO tools you would like to see made that are not on the market?

I can't believe I am making a post about reality TV...please don't hate me for it, but an SEO who met my friend Avi at WMW New Orleans is a canidate on The Apprentice.

While I do not watch TV I am rooting for the SEO. Those who watch, please take note to how & when he spams the show with product placement, keyword density, and the like.

Another good example of a simple site playing a competitive market (online flowers) from a slightly different angle. Gets lots of free viral links. Much less risky than the shill blogger technique.

Although, if people say it's the thought that counts, and the system is automated, does it still count?

So that Million Dollar Homepage idea is taking off so well that there is already a million penny homepage, another one charging a quarter per pixel, and one where you buy a guy beers.

It is so much harder to come up with an original idea than a meeee tooooo idea. Each additional copy cat only adds more value to the original as they crowd the marketplace and make it so that only the original stands out.

I believe it is going to be a limited beta test open to select advertisers, but...

From the Ingternet Herald Tribune:

Microsoft will unveil on Monday its own system for selling Web advertising as it struggles to compete with Google and Yahoo in the expanding Web search business. The system, to be used by MSN, is meant to improve on those of Microsoft's rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location.

...

Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft vice president, said the new service would have greater appeal to advertisers and ultimately would make more money for Microsoft. "We know we have to compete hard for our business," he said. "And we think we will offer advertisers better value because of the superior information we have about our audience."

Over on the NYT Google is already throwing the privacy card:

"We are very heavy on user privacy," said Tim Armstrong, the vice president for advertising at Google. "So our way of targeting advertising relies heavily on what we know about the content people are looking for." He added that Google does take other variables into account, like the time of day and the location of the user, but Google's technology does this automatically to make the process simpler for the advertiser.

while still leaving the demographic door open for themselves ;)

While Google does not currently use personal data to direct placement of its ads, there is nothing in its privacy policy that precludes it from doing so, said Michael Mayzel, a Google spokesman.

It will be interesting to see how Yahoo! plays with MSN. MSN will eventually dump Yahoo!s ads. In the past Yahoo! sued Google and FindWhat for Overture patents that could also affect the MSN ad system.

Personally I do not run huge PPC accounts (spending a few grand a month) but I do not think the demographic data is needed yet, and it could provide a creepy factor that works as negative advertising for MSN.

I wonder what features or changes Google and Yahoo! will quickly make in response to MSN's new ad system, which Danny likes:

Mr. Sullivan of Search Engine Watch praised the technical sophistication of Microsoft's approach and the level of information it plans to provide advertisers on the performance of their ad campaigns.

"They will definitely raise the bar on what Google and Yahoo have to provide," he said.

[update: looks like France got rolled out today. Danny has more info here.]