Microsoft said today that it has upgraded its adCenter online advertising system. At the same time, some adCenter customers said they saw a huge drop in Web traffic. Not sure if the upgrade caused the traffic to tumble; according to this blog Microsoft is playing down any connection.

The adCenter upgrade has an interesting feature. Microsoft said it will begin assessing the content of the ads and landing page in relation to the user's likely intent. (The landing page is the page you get to after you click on an ad.)

AdCenter still mostly works with Microsoft's search engine. Sounds like Microsoft is getting confident that it can figure out user intent on search.