by Manoj Jasra

Real Time search has been a major focus of many startups and search giants such as Bing and Google. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Podcasts, YouTube Videos, and Flickr all have taken the user generated content to a whole new level. This has put a lot of pressure on the search engine giants to efficiently track/index content for their users. But, the rate of content generation is so overwhelming that real-time social search engines make more sense than the traditional methods of searching for information.

Besides, Google and Bing who have integrated social search concept, there are lots of startups who have invested their resources in leading the way for new paradigm of search. Here are the top 10 search engines for especially Twitter, that are making their way to the future.

Twitterment http://www.twitterment.com/

Twitterment is a simple search, not exactly real time, and is powered by Google. It basically digs into all the public tweets made in Twitter and brings the relevant content related to the search keyword.

Search Twitter http://search.twitter.com/

Twitter Search is the foundation of all the search engines being developed. Its advance search allows users to customize their queries to find relevant information in the Twittersphere. It is still the most used search engine relating to Twitter.

Twitscoop http://www.twitscoop.com/

Twitscoop allows you to view real-time trends in the Twittersphere via its dynamic tag cloud. You can also search for the keywords in Twitter and receive click statuses if their being shortened by bit.ly. It is very similar to Twitter's default search.

Topsy http://topsy.com/

Topsy is one of the few search engines which have brought more than just search results, because it stores all the data from Twitter and segments it into the most tweeted and least tweeted tweets. It also shows the list of contributors along with their influence ratio. Furthermore, Topsy allows you to search for tweets based on domains and bring the most tweeted page from that domain. Topsy is one of the most useful and value added, Twitter powered search engines.

Oneriot http://www.oneriot.com/

OneRiot is the closest search engine to the realtime concept. OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, and then indexes the content on those pages in seconds. The end result is a search experience that allows users to find the freshest, and most socially-relevant content from across the realtime web.

Twazzup http://www.twazzup.com/

Twazzup is an interesting search engine that tries to bridge the gap between Twitter's real-time search and more traditional search engines. On Twazzup, you can follow a real-time stream of updates including a selected keyword on one side, while the other side shows the top tweets and a list of the top tweeted stories in regards to a given topic - plus related photos from twitpic.

Scoopler http://www.scoopler.com/

Scoopler is a real-time search engine that aggregates and organizes content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos/videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. It constantly indexes live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and others.

Collecta http://collecta.com/

Collecta provides similar content like the rest but with a major difference. It also digs into social sites for information but it allows users to focus their search by choosing between stories, comments, updates, photos and videos. Collecta allows them to track brands more efficiently than most of the others.

Twellow http://www.twellow.com/

Twellow is obviously based on Yellow pages with all the information being categorized in variety of sections. By adding people to specific categories Twellow helps you narrow your searching into specific niches where you can find who you are looking for.

Buzzom http://www.buzzom.com/

Buzzom is a promising player in social media which provides a simple way to search people in Twitter. Buzzom search allows you to search people with respect to bio, name, location and tweets. Unlike other search engines which are focused on content, Buzzom's search provides users with results relevant to people.

by Mike Moran

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, you really can learn SEO from your spouse. If you're married, you know something about SEO that you might not be putting to use. Think about how you landed your mate. When you do, you'll be learning something about how to do search marketing the right way.

The other day, I wrote a newsletter entitled, "Search Marketing Is Like Dating," where I explained how what you know about dating gives you the right attitude for search marketing. Some folks commented that it's more like marriage than dating and asked me to expand the analogy, so here ya go.

The mistake people make is to treat SEO as though it's all about getting the first date, by doing anything to attract Google. Instead, you need to think about a relationship, just as you did to win your spouse's heart. So, rather than chasing popular keywords and algorithm changes, think about the steps you took to find your mate:

• Put yourself out there. You didn't find your future spouse by sitting home on Saturday night. You went out and you socialized. Likewise, you must make sure your Web site has interesting pages and that Google can index them.
• Use your network to meet the right people. Some of you met your spouses through dumb luck, but many of you were introduced by someone you knew. Your network tells a lot about you and the people you meet. SEO has its own network, too--the pages that are linked to your pages are the way your pages get introduced to search engines and to customers. If you create pages that others care about, those pages will develop the network that gets them the attention they deserve.
• Look your best. When you finally get out on that date, yes, you want to look your best, but being with the right person is more important than how you look. Similarly, optimizing your pages to be their most attractive to Google is important, but doing so for the right keywords makes all the difference.

Stop thinking about search as a first date--it's a long-term relationship with Google and the other search engines. Even more important, it's a relationship with the searchers who become your customers. Don't look for flashy tactics that get you a first look. Instead, concentrate on what will work in the long run. That's what will make SEO something that drives business instead of just temporary attention.

What do you do if you want to track how often a link on your site is clicked? How do you see those links in Google Analytics (GA)? What filters and profiles should you create to accurately track this information? Hopefully, I can accurately answer these questions -- some of them in this post, some in the future. *Warning* if you don't care about web analytics, reading this post may produce seizures and a strong desire to fall asleep on the job.

First, why in the world would you want to track internal links? Isn't that stupid idea?

• If I click the "go here now" link on my site, and it takes me to another page on my site ( www.example/go_here_now.html ), why do I need to track the link? Wouldn't I just check the navigation path report for /go_here_now.html? Yes, you could do that. But what if you have multiple links on Page 1 that link to Page 2? How do you know what links brought someone from Page 1 to Page 2? Was it the blue link? Or the green button? The navigation path simply tells you what page people came from and to, it doesn't tell you exactly how they got from page to page

Second, which method of link tagging should you use?

• _trackPageview or utm?

• If you don't know the difference, read this bullet. If you do, skip to the next bullet.
  • The _trackPageview JavaScript creates a fake pageview. This method is most commonly used to track outgoing links or downloads. The _trackPageview attribute is placed within the <a> tag and looks like this: onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/example/blue-link'). The /example/blue-link becomes a new pageview and it is tracked in GA as a new pageview - so it will increase your pageview count. These fake pageviews will now show up in your "content" reports. More information.
  • The utm method involves telling GA what the campaign name is (you define this), the source (typcially something like Google), and the medium (typically something like PPC) - as well as a few other options. This method is most commonly used in tracking PPC campaigns (as Google AdWords does this automatically), email campaigns, and other external campaigns that link back to your site. Epikone has a great post on this, and here's some additional Google info.
• I recommend using the _trackPageview method.
  • If you choose to tag your links with utm, it erases all referral information. In other words, if someone arrived at your site via a Google organic search; but they then clicked on an internal link that had the utm tagging, you lose the insight that the visitor originally came from the Google organic search (the source and medium). Instead, you see the new source and medium information that you manually entered. For me, that's not a good option. I need to know where the visitor came from as much as I need to know what internal links they're clicking on. Again, check out Epikone's post.
  • Because _trackPageview creates a new pageview, you can use custom filters to include and exclude those pageviews from GA profiles (more on that below). Also, you don't lose any referral information.

Now then, to answer the questions I began this post with...

Step 1: Proper GA tracking script placement.

• Usually, when we're not using _trackPageview, we recommend placing your GA tracking script just before the close of your <body> tag. We do this so that if GA is loading slowly (which rarely happens), your whole page can load before GA kicks in and it won't have to wait up for a slow GA server. However, in this method we're tagging links within the <body> tag, so GA needs to kick in before those tagged links load on the page. The GA tracking script should be placed after the opening of the <body>  tag, and before your tagged links, to ensure your tagged links load after the GA tracking script. Make sense?

Step 2: Add the _trackPageview variable to your links.

• Add the snippet onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/example.com']);" to your links. Once done, your link should look like this:
• <a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/example.com']);"

Step 3: Define your URL structure. Be as Type A as possible.

• In order to use this tool effectively, you will want to quickly find and filter in/out and all of your manually-created pageviews. I recommend using at least two subdirectories when deciding how to name your new "pages." For example: internal-links/blue-link. Even better: internal-links/homepage/blue-link. The reason? If you're trying to quickly find and filter your manually tagged internal links, having a generic base directory like "internal-links" makes your life a lot easier. Creating each link with only one subdirectory like /blue-link and /pink-link and /red-button means you would have to search for each of those URLs manually -- boorrrrrring.

Step 4 (OPTIONAL): Create a filter to exclude your new pageviews from your regular profile.

• Create a custom filter:
  • Filter Type: Custom filter
  • Check the "Exclude" radio button
  • Filter Field: Request URI
  • Filter Pattern: ^/internal-links/homepage.*
  • Case Sensetive: No

Step 5 (OPTIONAL): Create a new profile to include only your new links.

• Create a new profile. Again, be Type A with your naming system
• Create a filter. From the dropwdown menu, select the "Include traffic only to a subdirectory"
• Enter the two base directories of your newly created pageviewinto the "Subdirectory". Using our example of /internal-links/homepage/blue-link, we would enter this into the "Subdirectory" field
  • ^/internal-links/homepage/

Step 6: Test it

• After 24 hours, view your new profile to see if everything was implemented properly.
• If you didn't create a new profile, view your "Top Content" report and search for "internal-links" or whatever nomenclature you chose to use. 
• If it's not working, check to ensure you've copied the _trackPageview code exactly as is and check to ensure your filters are implemented properly if you're using them. If you're stuck, feel free to drop a comment and we'll get back to you.

There you have it! I'll write another post on how to use these pageviews for goal tracking, but in the meantime please don't hesitate to ask questions if this was confusing, and please let me know if I'm off base.

I'm going to go get some exercise or something...my head hurts, and I've fulfilled my nerd quota for the week.