Google has released another tool to make live easier for Internet marketers. After entering demographics and other sites marketers are targeting, Google Ad Planner will find other sites that reflect a desired audience.

Most appealing is Google’s refusal to only provide information on sites in their own ad network. All sites are available for perusal, and it’s good to see Google provide the technology without any strings attached.

Google claims that this program is targeted directly at media planners and provides the means to concoct a .csv file that can be exported and presented to clients and managers. Ad Planner is currently available by invitation, and those interested can apply here.

This comes on the heels of the release of Google Trends for Websites, a simple and useful program that lets users find out keywords and other sites users are visiting when they visit a particular site entered. In fact, according to Google, Trends for Websites arose as they were developing Ad Planner. Google wanted to provide this info to non-advertising consumers, thus Google Trends for Websites.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land asked Google what tools they are using to draw their Ad Planner data from, but Google is not spilling the beans. “We do not disclose the elements of our secret sauce as these elements are subject to change. Similar to Google search, disclosing our data sources could also encourage people to game the system,” said Google to Sullivan. Sullivan speculates that Google may be tapping into data mined from Google Toolbar, which is rumored to be a trojan Google uses to acquire data from individuals.

Secret sauce. I always though it was Thousand Island dressing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.