What Is the Microsoft OCI Indicator?
No longer available online, the Microsoft Online Commercial Intention indicator website used to provide information about buyer keywords. Microsoft developed a tool, no longer available as of the spring of 2011, that could estimate the commercial intention of a specific keyword. Internet and affiliate marketers often used this tool to determine how profitable a particular keyword might be.
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Microsoft's adLab
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Microsoft created an "advertising laboratory" website named adLab, and provided free search engine optimization tools, including the OCI tool, to any user who would help the company determine the commercial intention of a particular keyword. The user would input the keyword in the field provided on the page, and the site would return a result of commercial intention, listed as a percentage. For instance, the word “Escort 8500” returned a 99 percent online commercial intention, whereas “radar detectors” returned a value of 28 percent. To the Internet marketer that meant that people searching for radar detectors were generally looking for information without the intention to buy.
Online Intention
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Several Microsoft research analysts studied the topic of online intention and wrote about it in the paper “Detecting Online Commercial Intention,” which outlined the intention of Internet users and shoppers. The findings determined three types of Internet searches existed: navigation-based, information-based and transaction-based. Navigation- and transaction-based searches include those made by users seeking to purchase something on the Internet.
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Tools
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Microsoft made the adLab tools free to users to help them plan their advertising campaigns on Microsoft’s advertising networks. Beginning in 2006, several keyword and search engine optimization tools were offered to Microsoft advertisers. The Microsoft OCI tool was just one of several tools available on the adLab site until the spring of 2011 when Microsoft pulled the website. Other tools included keyword tools for misspelled keywords, content and keyword categorization tools, demographic information tools and more.
Microsoft Advertising Center
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Using Microsoft’s Advertising Center, Internet marketers who use the Microsoft advertising network can download free tools for use with Office 2010. The tools include Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, which allows you to research and optimize your search advertising campaign keywords right inside Microsoft Office Excel 2010; Microsoft Advertising adCenter Desktop, which allows you to manage your advertising campaigns; and Ad Preview Tool, a tool that allows you to confirm that your advertisement appears correctly on Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
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