Finally, one of my ideas, one that I approached Microsoft with almost two years ago at Webmasterword Pubcon in Boston in 2006, is happening - Microsoft Adds More Tools for Search Marketers

"..Microsoft today launched the adCenter Add-in for Excel and adExcellence accreditation program for search advertisers, and a new Webmaster Center for organic search optimizers."

"…One tool that will come out of adCenter Labs and into production next month is the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. The add-in lets users conduct keyword research and plan keyword strategy from within an Excel spreadsheet, using attributes like relevance, historical cost information and projected volume. It's designed to help advertisers understand keyword popularity and trends, and gain insight on demographic and localization information of actual queries.

"It's designed to help our advertisers become more knowledgeable about their customer base," Colborn said. "As a search engine, we have a lot of data on a keyword. The goal here is to work with our advertisers to provide a toolset they can use to access that data in an easy-to-use fashion."

Many advertisers are already using Excel to work with keyword data from third-party sources, so it only made sense for Microsoft to create a tool that allows them to work with data directly in Excel, he said.

I did a bit of keyword research last year using AdCenter and found myself wishing for a tool to do planning with in Excel - now I'm glad they finally moved in that direction and provided it.

I had spoken to several people at Microsoft about it at the time - but this is the first I've heard of any of the ideas I have had, materializing, in regards to Microsoft.