Archive for Search Tools and Technologies
A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web
Posted by: | CommentsAre Twitter and the real-time web a fundamental shift in how we communicate? Or is the real-time web just a fad?
Photo credit: Chris Lamphear
While it is clear that the web has greatly simplified the way you and I consume information, now the problem is how to handle the huge amount of content that is produced.
Just a few decades ago your morning newspaper, TV news and a couple of phone calls with your friends would just suffice to keep you updated on your interests. But now the web has created new scenarios by tearing down the barriers of physical proximity.
People all around the world are forming an army of content producers that upload videos to YouTube, tweet interesting resources and report every sort of thing in an instant fashion, just as it happens.
While it is absolutely great to receive news in a way that old media could never do, rapid information tends also to be less accurate. A news story is frequently spitted out with no regard for the original sources and ends up being just useless buzz.
What is the real-time web then? Is it a revolution or just an involution?
To find out, I asked my good friend and learning researcher George Siemens to share his personal experience with Twitter and the real-time web tools.
Here is what George had to say:
A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web
Duration: 7′ 05”
Full English Text Transcription
George Siemens: With the real-time-web my experience at least has been that it is a very big conceptual change. But it is not something that is new by itself.
When I first started blogging, for example, the first thing it did to me was it challenged the notion of the newspaper. It challenged the notion that I had to go and get my information at a certain time of the day, in a certain format. No longer did I have to wait until six o’clock in the evening to catch the news program that told me what happened during the day. No longer did I have to wait for my morning newspaper at 7am to hear what happened in the US presidential election.
Now, especially as last several elections have taught us, through just following blogs and following online conversations, I can get a really good sense of what is happening in almost real-time on blogs. And it has even caused now newspapers to have started a huge blog component to their news sharing. Even sites like CNN’s iReporter… they have started to incorporate comments that are shared with readers of the site.
Normally, this would be people who would only be readers. Now they become participants. Twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed and other tools have kind of changed that, again.
I read recently that the big news events, so far at this year, have been first broadcast on Twitter. They have not been broadcast trough traditional media channels. That experience resonates perfectly with me with the Hudson river plane crash earlier this year.
It was within a minute or so there was an image of someone basically sitting in their apartment… watching out their window… obviously being completely startled to see this plane coming in… They grabbed, I guess, a cell phone, took a quick image of it and posted it on to Twitpic… It was that fast. Before the plane was even in the river, somebody was saying: “This is what is happening“. It was on Twitter immediately and I followed the initial conversation exclusively on Twitter. The reason was: Nothing else at the time was covering it.
A second much more tragic incident was with the Air France flight that crashed, or disappeared I guess, just a few days ago.
I was sitting in an airport in Winnipeg and I brought up Twitterrific on my iPhone… I was just sort of flipping through and… the first announcement there was: “Plane missing… Air France” …and so I immediately went to sites that I would normally trust: CBC News, CNN… nothing. There was nothing on these channels about this yet. I kept following the feed on Twitterrific… somebody had, of course, assigned the flight tag already to it… and someone said: “Go to this site to see the most updated news“… I started following the entire incident in about half an hour before I left.
It was only when I got to Toronto, two hours later, that I was able to log on to a computer and then check online to see what was happening. There was a bit of information on some of the main news sites. What was interesting though… I learned nothing new from these news sites.
If I am someone who has a huge interest obviously in what is happening and in the incident unfolding, Twitter is far superior to free information sharing purposes than some of these structured news sites. But that is around a significant event, that is around a once-in-a-lifetime or catastrophic events. That is not the only reason we use tools like Twitter for.
I use Twitter heavily just for sharing information. I will come across a link that I like… I do not want to write a blog post about it. I just want to say: “Hey, this is interesting” and so I quickly share with people who are part of my network. If they like it, great. If they do not like it, no problem.
I think it is the immediacy of Twitter, but also one of the unique things about Twitter is… One of the things that blogs never allowed me to do was to get to know people. You could know them somewhat through their ideas, but you would only know them intellectually or by emotions. They would say: “Oh, this really takes me off… I do not like… whatever…” Also in Twitter comes along and now I could know them by their life. What I mean by that is it became that morning water cooler conversation you used to have. The guy that would say: “I ate bagels… I love espresso… I enjoy this… I saw this movie last night, it was… whatever“. Pieces of information that were too insignificant to share on a blog, but extremely personal, that helped me to form a relationship about a human being.
What that end has done, it has generated in a short period of time, a sense of social cohesion that I never had in seven / eight years of blogging.
Now I have found in less than a year on Twitter, that I know people that I follow on Twitter far better, because I know their likes and dislikes. Before I just knew their thoughts.
Now I get to know them as a person, as a personality. That has been one significant change as well. Otherwise…
This is one thing that I find for me at least, was to recognize that Twitter emulates the flow of information, which means…
I used to… I have blogs that I would read regularly… and I go to the site… or my blog reader… I would follow what had been happening… which meant that I could follow the development of a person’s thought, consistently.
I would never miss a blog post by certain prominent bloggers… I would follow your work, Stephen Downes, D’Arcy Norman, Brian Lamb, Alec Couros, Janet Cleary who is with Brandon Hall… I would follow these people and I would always know when they had posted.
With Twitter you gain a real sense of how tremendous the information flow is. I have said before that I am OK following just one percent of what happens on Twitter.
I cannot follow Twitter the way I follow a blog. I Twitter, I sample.
When I am on Twitter I read what has happened in the last little bit… and I go on. I cannot keep track of what everyone has done, because there is too much being shared.
I found Twitter to be a big conceptual shift for me and I have had to recognize that I cannot keep track. I have had to be at peace with myself to only follow one percent of what is happened, and to recognize that it is OK… even that one percent is important to me, but I just do not have time to follow the full breadth of it.
Your question of: “What is about the real-time web then? Is it just a fad? Is it something…”
My response would be: Twitter may be a fad. It may come and go the way like many other tools have, but:
- The notion of being able to connect socially, connect consistently,
- The ability to connect informally without just being part of my work routine, or having read a blog post to talk about it,
that, I think, is far more than a fad.
I think that:
- The real-time information,
- The real-time awareness of what is happening,
- The close connection with friends and family through a tool like Twitter…
…that, I think, is a fundamental shift in how we communicate.
Video interviews by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia. Article editing by Daniele Bazzano and Elia Lombardi. First published on September 25th, 2009 as “A Fundamental Shift In How We Communicate: George Siemens, Twitter And The Real-Time Web“.
About George Siemens
George Siemens is the Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. George blogs at www.elearnspace.org where he shares his vision on the educational landscape and the impact that media technologies have on the educational system. George Siemens is also the author of Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book “Knowing Knowledge” where he develops a learning theory called connectivism which uses a network as the central metaphor for learning and focuses on knowledge as a way to making connections.
How To Measure The Link Popularity Of A Website – Guide To The Best Tools
Posted by: | CommentsLink popularity is essentially based on the number of incoming links to a specific web site or web page; the more the number of incoming links, the higher the link popularity.
Photo credit: solarseven
But link popularity is both a measure and a process. As a process it strives to earn inbound links from other websites to improve the importance of a specific site. As a measure it helps determine how popular a web page is by the number of backlinks (incoming links). Search engines such as Google use value as a measure to help them rank your any web site inside search engine result pages.
Indeed, links pointing to a web page play an integral role in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Along with giving more importance to the number of links a web page has, search engines also pay close attention to link patterns. So it is not only the number of links pointing to your web page that determines your position inside the SERPs, but also the quality of those very links.
The quality of a link is determined by two factors:
a) authority of the web page linking to you and
b) the link anchor text.
Be aware therefore, that not all incoming links are born the same. As a matter of fact a raw count of how “popular” a page only based on the number of inbound links, it is only of limited value. A qualified analysis should also factor in link context and link quality, which are critical elements of how search engines, such as Google, make use of links to determine who appears higher or lower inside search engine result pages.
To find out more about the link popularity of your own website, I’ve gathered and reviewed the best tools and web services that allow you to measure your web site link popularity. I have also prepared a comparative table showcasing the key features of these link popularity checking tools to facilitate your choice.
Here below the list of criteria I have used to review the best tools and services to measure the link popularity of your website:
- Search engine references: Search engines utilized to count all incoming links.
- Comparative analysis: Comparative reporting against one or more sites.
- Email Reporting: Link popularity report sent to your inbox.
- Domain exclusion: Exclusion of incoming links from your own domain.
- PageRank Check: Google ranking check for your site.
Here all the details:
How To Measure The Link Popularity Of A Website Comparison Table
How To Measure The Link Popularity Of A Website – Best Tools And Services
- Yahoo! Site Explorer
Yahoo! has a free service that shows you how many web pages are linking back to your website. With Yahoo! Site Explorer you can exclude your own domain and include / exclude your subdomains. You can also get a report of the incoming links to your entire website or only to a selected web page. Data can also be exported in table (.TSV) format and downloaded to your computer. You can embed a branded Yahoo! badge on your website to display your link popularity. No URL comparison, email report or PageRank check.
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ - Marketleap
Link Popularity Check by Marketleap measures the popularity of your website by checking how many web pages are linking back to you. Search engines used to gather the information are: Google, Yahoo!, AOL, HotBot, FAST and AltaVista. You can compare your own website with up to two sites and check which website has more incoming links. You can also select the category (Movies, Music, News, Media, etc.) of the websites you are comparing. No email report, domain exclusion or Page Rank check. Free to use.
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ - Linkscape
Linkscape tool scouts the whole web to find web pages that are linking back to you. The data you get include: mozRank index, individual incoming links, domains linking to your site and mozRank of your subdomain (specific URLs for sections of your website). You can exclude your own domain from the results. Features like URL comparison, email reporting or PageRank check are not available.
http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape - Free-Webmaster-Tools
Link Popularity check from Free-Webmaster-Tools uses seven major search engines to collect all links you have from other web pages. Search engines used are: Google, AllTheWeb, HotBot, Lycos, AOL, Live Search, and Altavista. Your site results can also be compared with two URLs of your choice. The report of your link popularity is e-mailed to you. No domain exclusion and PageRank check.
http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/link_popularity.htm - Xinu Returns
Xinu Returns is a web service which shows you a configurable dashboard of major items to check to boost your link popularity. You see data like Alexa Rankings, Google PageRank, Technorati authority and many others, all in a glance. A specific section of the dashboard indicates the number of links you receive from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Ask, HotBot and Altavista. No URL comparison, email reporting and domain exclusion.
http://xinureturns.com/ - Backlink Watch!
Backlink Watch! is a free web service that helps you to check how many incoming links you have from other websites. The service indicates precisely which item in a web page is linking to you: image, anchor text, banner, etc. Also, Backlink Watch! identifies “nofollow” links, which are incoming links that are not indexed by search engines. PageRank check is available as well. No websites comparison, email report or domain exclusion.
http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ - SEO Centro
The free Link Popularity tool from SEO Centro searches on Google, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and Live Search to determine how many links you have from other websites. You can compare the link popularity results of your site with two more URLs and receive a detailed report to your own mailbox. No domain exclusion or PageRank check.
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/link-popularity.html - AddME
AddME is a free web service to check your link popularity just by typing the URL of your website. Inbound links are retrieved from Google, Yahoo!, AllTheWeb, Ask and Altavista. No URL comparison, email reporting, domain exclusion or PageRank check available.
http://www.addme.com/popularity.htm - Popuri.us
Popuri.us allows you to check at a glance the link popularity of your site counting your inbound links, ranking, social bookmarks, subscribers and more. Links to your website are collected from Google, Yahoo! and Live Search. PageRank check is available. You can embed the results of your popularity inside a web page using a widget. No URL comparison, email reporting or domain exclusion. Free to use.
http://popuri.us/
Alternative Ways To Measure The Link Popularity Of Your Website
- Google
Write the name of your website like this: “link:www.example.com” inside Google Search and the result will display a list of webpages that link to your website.
- Yahoo!
To find links to your website using Yahoo! Search, type “linkdomain:example.com -site:example.com“. This search will return a list of all the pages that link to your own website, excluding your domain.
N.B.: Some services e-mail you a report of your link popularity instead of showing immediately the results on your screen. You should always be very careful when giving away your personal address, as it may expose your mailbox to unwanted promotional e-mails, or even spam. That’s why if you want to keep your e-mail address private, you may consider using one of the free web services that create a disposable and anonymous email inbox.
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on June 22nd, 2009 as “How To Measure The Link Popularity Of A Website – Guide To The Best Tools“.
If you are looking into innovative ways to browse and explore search engine results, visual search engines may provide exactly what you have been looking for. Instead of long lists of page titles and URLs, visual search engines deliver visually rich maps of content results, often utilizing also size, color and positioning to communicate at a glance a greater array of information about the items found.
Photo credit: lhfgraphic
Visual search engines are generally web-based tools just like Google and they require no extra software or plugin to be installed. You can just type a keyword and start diving inside their visual result pages: select a visualization type, re-arrange your results, sort them by date, relevance, or by other possible parameters.
Within the set of visual search engines available out there, there are some that allow you to search standard Web-based content as well as others capable of retrieving also network contacts, similar sites, videos, images, podcasts, and much more.
In fact, some of these visual search engines will also search for your preferred keywords inside Wikipedia, Amazon or Twitter.
To explore and give a try these eye-striking visual search engines you need to look no further as I have taken the time to search, check and pull together a guide that includes all of the visual search engines out there.
As always, I have also done some extra homework to identify some basic comparison criteria to help you select the visual search engine that could best match your needs:
- Technology Type: Software or web-based.
- Visualization types: Dynamic map, stacks, list, tag clouds, etc.
- Content Sources: Web, Wikipedia, videos, images, Amazon Books, Twitter, etc.
- Search options: Sort by date, exclude keywords, search inside domain, RSS, etc.
Here all of the best visual search engines and what I have discovered about each one:
Top Visual Search Engines Comparison Table
Top Visual Search Engines
1. Grokker
Grokker is a web-based search engine that allows you to explore your results in a visual fashion. Your results are displayed both in a standard outline and in a dynamic map you can interact with. Grokker takes advantage of Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and Amazon Books search engines to perform its queries. Results can be sorted by date, source, domain and refined selecting (or excluding) specific related keywords. Grokker is also available as a software for enterprise use.
http://www.grokker.com/
2. KartOO
KartOO is a web-based visual search engine that can search the Web, images, videos and Wikipedia entries. Using Google, and Yahoo! search engines KartOO allows you to create a visual map where related results are linked between them. You can save and print your map, filter results using a parental filter, and filter your SERPs by language.
http://www.kartoo.com/
3. Viewzi
Viewzi is a powerful visual search engine that provides many different possibilities to display your results. Using Yahoo!, Google and Viddler, you can search the Web, images and videos. SERPs can be arranged in stacks, along a Google timeline, for individual site information, using simple text, showing a photo tag cloud, and more. Results can be also customized as you can star or hide sites you care / don’t care about. A parental filter is also available.
http://www.viewzi.com/
4. Searchme
Searchme is a web-based search engine that allows you to explore SERPs in a visual fashion. Searchme displays results in a dynamic carousel stack you can navigate back and forth. Searches are performed in multiple categoreis like videos, images, advertising, shopping, sport,, entertainment, news, and more. Other features include a parental filter, the possibility to play media right inside Searchme, and the sharing of your results via Twitter.
http://www.searchme.com/
5. Quintura
Quintura is a web-based search engine that allows you to explore results visually. Quintura can search the Web, images and Blinkx. Results are displayed in a customizable tag cloud, and a classic organic outline. the tag cloud with your results can be also embedded and shared with others via e-mail.
http://www.quintura.com/
6. Ujiko
Ujiko is a visual search engine you can use to display and explore your search results visually. Completely web-based, Ujiko allows you to scout the Web and arrange your results in a radial outline. Available in English, German and French.
http://www.ujiko.com/
7. Search-cube
Search-cube is a search engine that instead displaying your results in a classic organic style, creates a 3D cube made up of visual previews. Web-based and very easy to use, Search-cube allows you to search for sites, images, and videos.
http://www.search-cube.com/
8. Middlespot
Middlespot is a visual search engine that lets you explore the results of your searches in a visual fashion. Sources available for search are: Web, Images, News, Amazon and Twitter. Middlespots allows you to create as many workpads as the search terms you want to explore. Results will be displayed inside a gallery where you can zoom and re-arrange elements.
http://middlespot.com/
9. oSkope
oSkope is a visual search engine. Using oSkope you can visually display and explore search results for specific keywords right inside your browser window. Results from Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo! and YouTube can be explored in different visualizations styles like: grid, stack, pile, graph and list.
http://oskope.com/
10. Nexplore
Nexplore allows you to browse your search results in a visual fashion. Nexplore performs searches on the Web, news, videos, images, blogs and podcasts. The web-based service shows also related Wikipedia definitions for your searched keywords. Results can be displayed in three ways: summary, line, gallery, and can be shared on the Internet.
http://www.nexplore.com/
11. eyePlorer
eyePlorer is not a proper visual search engine, because you cannot search for any words or phrase you like. The service rather provides you with a visual representation for common, popular facts and suggest connections with other related facts and sources. All results displayed inside a colored wheel can be arranged onto a virtual notepad for later reading and sorted for relevance.
http://www.eyeplorer.com/
12. Ziipa
Ziipa is a web-based visual search engine for Web 2.0 web designs and applications. Unlike other competitors in this field, Ziipa does not search images, videos, or other media content. Results are showed by a gallery and a tag cloud and can be shared and syndicated via RSS.
http://www.ziipa.com/
13. RedZee
RedZee is a visual search engine that shows search results in a visual fashion, displaying a carousel you can navigate back and forth right inside your browser window. No media content can be searched via RedZee.
http://www.redzee.com/
14. Liveplasma
Liveplasma is a visual search engine to explore music and movies. By searching for a keyword related to these two topics, the service will suggest other potential related interests and arrange them in bubbles, linked between them. All without leaving your browser. You can also refine your map by searching for specific topics like directors, actors, or a particular discography. The map with your results can also be shared on the Web.
http://www.liveplasma.com/
15. TouchGraph Google Browser
TouchGraph Google Browser is a visual search engine that displays the connections between web sites using Google technology and visualizing the results in an interactive and customizable map. Results can be filtered and re-arranged around the map. You need to have at least Java 1.5 installed on your machine for TouchGraph Google Browser to work.
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on April 20th, 2009 as “Top Visual Search Engines: The Most Interesting Ways To Visually Explore Search Engine Results“.
How can you track links to your site and monitor mentions others make of you on other web sites? Ego searching, ego-surfing, buzz and conversation tracking are online services set-up to gather all the info about you so that you never miss the opportunity to join a conversation.
Photo credit: cybermarti
Web 2.0 is all about conversations and interaction with other people. Tracking what people are saying about you or your products and services, is very important if you want to improve your profile, positioning, and online reputation. But often, conversations are difficult to monitor over time, as they can start on one web site, and then splinter into multiple locations.
For example, a user comments your video on YouTube, then another user tweets that comment on Twitter, and then somebody replies to that tweet on FriendFeed. How can you monitor such a scattered stream of thoughts without losing time and efforts?
There are many web tools that can efficiently track, monitor and bring together links, citations, mentions and references so that you can easily make sense of the buzz which is generated around you, or your web site.
No matter which one you choose, among the several I have selected here, the approach is always the same:
a) You input your name, between quotes (such as in “Robin Good“) or the URL of your web site (or of a specific article)
b) The service goes out to find links and mentions of your site / name or URL and reports them back to you.
To help you out, I’ve personally selected in this guide the best free tools to do ego-searching, buzz tracking and social media monitoring of yourself or of your web site.
To facilitate your choice among these different tools, I have also identified some basic criteria you can use to evaluate which service may be a best fit for your needs:
- Sources: Content and news sources used to search.
- Notification: Supported notifications systems for alerts.
- Trend Tracking: Feature that monitors your “status” over time.
- Type: Nature of service (web.based, software browser plugin).
- Comparison: Ability to compare multiple profiles, people or sites.
- Widget: Feature that allows you to embed a widget to show the conversation related to your web site.
Here all the best ego-searching, buzz monitoring and trackers of social media mentions out there:
Best Buzz Tracking and Social Media Monitoring Tools Comparison Table
go to the table!Buzz Tracking and Social Media Monitoring Tools
- BlogPulse
BlogPulse is a complete solution for buzz tracking, blog searching and blog trends monitoring. You just have to choose a set of keywords and then you can monitor and track citations, referral links, and analyze the trends for a blog. BlogPulse indexes blogs, news, videos and then delivers your results via RSS feed. No embeddable widget available.
http://www.blogpulse.com/ - Bloglines
Bloglines is a social search engine that allows you to crawl the Web for mentions, blog posts, and RSS feeds. You can also track selected keywords over time, in a range from one to six months. Auto-updating notifications are available via RSS feed. If you register to the service, you can also access a customizable dashboard where you can compare sources you select for a quick overview over all your search results. No widgets available for your site.
http://www.bloglines.com/ - uberVU
uberVU is a powerful social media monitoring tool that tracks the buzz allowing you to follow a conversation splintered off on multiple web sites, blog comments, or tweets very easily. Just paste any URL (or use the dedicated bookmarklet), and let uberVU aggregate all the conversations in a threaded stream of data which will automatically auto-updates over time. You can also request the uberVU API to have your readers monitor your social media presence directly from your own web site. No notification like e-mail or RSS feed available at the moment. uberVU is currently in private beta, but is expected to go public soon.
http://www.ubervu.com/ - Icerocket
Icerocket is a search engine that allows you to track the Web for mentions of your blog or your social profile. You can search the Web, blogs, videos, images, news, Twitter, and MySpace. You can compare the sources in the result page and access them via RSS feed. The sources can auto-update in a time range you decide. No embeddable widget available, but great feature that allows you to monitor trends on the web selecting a set of keywords and a range of time (from one to three months).
http://www.icerocket.com/ - Social Mention
Social Mention is a web-based buzz tracking and social media monitoring tool to do ego-searching on the Internet. Social Mention allows you to track the Web, blogs, comments, microblogging services, Q&A pages, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos and audio. To search, just type your name (or use the advanced options to refine your search), and the service will show you a customized search result page you can follow via RSS feed or download in CSV/Excel format. Social Mention also allows you to see what’s your ranking inside social media by telling you how many times you’re mentioned online and where. Search results do not auto-update, and no embeddable widgets for your web site is available.
http://www.socialmention.com/ - surchur
surchur is a web-based service to do ego searching on the Web and track the buzz around yourself, your company, and your products. surchur can search on social media, blog, pictures, products, video, and news. Your results can be syndicated and will auto-update each time there’s something new. No embeddable widgets for your site, nor proper trend monitoring but you can access a “history” of the previous search on surchur related to your topics of interest.
http://surchur.com/ - Technorati
Technorati is a blog search engine. You can use Technorati to search for blog posts, blog sites that matches your keywords of interest. To let your be indexed just register to the service and submit your URL. You can then publish a small widget on your site which shows your “authority“, it is the number of blogs linking to your web site in the last six months. The higher the authority, the more your blog is involved in conversation around the Web. No trend monitoring or comparison features available.
http://technorati.com/ - Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a web service to monitor specific keywords and automatically receive alerts on your Gmail inbox. After registering for a Google account (if you don’t already own one), to create a new alert you just have to choose some search terms, set what you want to monitor (news, blogs, videos, groups, the Web, or all of those), when (once a day, once a week, as-it-happens) and choose a valid Gmail address. Google Alerts will then constantly track the Internet and send you notifications accordingly. No embeddable widget available for your site.
http://www.google.com/alerts - FriendFeed Search
FriendFeed built-in search engine allows you to do ego-searching and buzz tracking among all the conversation created and followed by FriendFeed. Just register to the service, and type your keywords or choose the advanced search options to refine your search indicating if you want to track a specific user, site, language, or more. You can also follow the results stream via RSS feed, but it does not auto-update, so you cannot monitor searches over time automatically. No embeddable widget for your web / blog site.
http://friendfeed.com/search - Twitter Search
Twitter built-in search engine allows you to search tweets for specific keywords. The results page auto-updates to let you monitor your searches over time, even via RSS feed. You can also use the advanced search options to track tweets from a particular tweeter, a given language, hash tags, and more. Twitter search works only with Twitter and has no embeddable widget you can add to your site.
http://search.twitter.com/
Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 30, 2009 as “Buzz Tracking And Social Media Monitoring: Best Tools To Do Ego Searching And Find Out Who Is Talking About Me – Mini-Guide“.
If you are trying to make your site more visible inside Google search engine result pages, here is a great set of Google-recommended tools to help you increase the findability of your site inside the SERPs.
Photo credit: hypermania
From proper indexing, to titling, link popularity, keyword analysis and proper HTML coding everything adds up when it comes to getting greater visibility inside major search engines result pages.
Luckily it is the AdSense Google team itself who has picked and selected the ultimate list of visibility, SEO and traffic driving tools to help you stay on top of the search engine traffic game.
Here all the details:
Light Up Your Site
1. The Command “Site“
Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site’s address after the command “site“, like [site:example.com].
When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page.
If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.
2. Sitemap
If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
3. Image Search
Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site.
Don’t miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg].
4. SiteLinks
Manage your SiteLinks.
Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don’t think users will find useful.
5. Diagnostic Checklist
Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools and consult the diagnostics checklist.
6. HTTP Status Codes
Serve accurate HTTP status codes.
The more Google knows about your old pages, the faster it will find the next best page on your site for a given query.
7. Organic Content
Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
8. SEO Starter Guide
Read the recently released Google SEO Starter Guide.
9. Webmaster Tutorials
Watch Google Tutorials for Webmasters.
10. Webmaster Tools
Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
11. Webmaster Central Blog
Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
12. Webmaster Help Center / Group
Find answers to your questions in Google Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.
Additional Resources
- How To Name Your Blog Site And Domain URL – SEO – SEM Beginner’s Guide
- How To Name Your Site: Beginner’s Guide To Search Engine Optimization
- Write Great Titles For Your Blog Posts – SEO – SEM Beginner’s Guide
- How To Get Good Links: SEO – SEM Beginner’s Guide
- Online Video SEO: How To Make Your Video Content More Visible On Major Search Engines
- The Social Media Optimization Manifesto: Key Social Marketing Principles To Increase The Visibility Of Your Web Site
Originally written by Julie Beckmann for Inside Adsense and first published on December 22, 2008 as “Light up your site“.
Photo credits:
Sitemap – Writemaps
SiteLinks – Get Found Now
Diagnostic Checklist – Ljupco Smokovski
HTTP Status Code – Raymond Mclean
SEO Starter Guide – Vinicius Tupinamba
Webmaster Tools – mchudo
Webmaster Help Center / Group – mipan
A new search and “discovery” engine has been recently unveiled and made accessible to everyone online. The new search engine called Powerset, promises to improve the entire search process by allowing you, the user, to express your search queries via keywords, phrases, or simple questions. On the search results page, Powerset provides search results while also aggregating information from multiple sources and leveraging the best content available inside Wikipedia.
“Powerset’s goal is to change the way people interact with technology by enabling computers to understand our language. …Powerset is first applying its natural language processing to search, aiming to improve the way we find information by unlocking the meaning encoded in ordinary human language.”
(Source: Powerset)
Here, media and content business analyst John Blossom, takes you into a closer look at this new entry in the search engine marketplace:
Powerset: Transforming Publications Through Semantic Search Technology
by John Blossom
There are rocket scientists, then there are rocket scientists – and then there’s Barney Pell, long-time Silicon Valley startup maven and currently the Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Powerset. Barney is one of those rare people who has been a rocket scientist via both the NASA side of the term and the software industry side, an outlook that has helped him to assemble many teams through the years that have developed advanced search and language processing technologies.
Powerset Search Overview
Powerset has unveiled its first effort recently at a new technology to provide rich content from semantic searches, an interesting look at how one can completely reshape the face of a content product via enhanced search technologies.
Using Wikidpedia and as its primary target content, Powerset technology analyzes search phrases to come up with search results that match natural language phrases as well as keywords.
Powerset Road Test
This being a very early stage debut of technology some search targets work better than others and overall I’d have to say that it’s a technology that seems to do best with people and things as opposed to concepts.
For example, if you type in “Who is Bill Gates?” you get the screen similar to the top of the above screen grab, which includes a top deck of biographical information from the Freebase reference database followed by Powerset’s sets of semantic analysis called “Factz” that focus on what the Wikipedia article says about this prominent figure. One of these sets, for example, tells us that Gates gave testimony, a speech, an address, a demo, a presentation and a deposition. You can click on any of these terms to get more details from the underlying article.
Below the initial bio and Factz information is a set of search results for the initial query, including the best-match article on Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This is in essence the straight Wikipedia article with links mapped over to Powerset’s version of this content, along with a handy visual presentation of the article’s outline on the right or another listing of key Factz organized within the article outline. I like some of the inferences that it’s come up with in the Wikipedia definition of Content that I contributed a while back: “information provides value; experiences provide value; content provides value.” True enough.
I like how Powerset prefixes organic search results with federated content, taking a best stab at results on very focused topics that enable people to obtain knowledge more quickly and effectively.
The automatically generated Factz, though, suffer from the same problem that most semantic tools experience when they examine a very small data set: spotty inferences. For example, in the Factz about Bill Gates Powerset inferred that he founded Cher, an inference drawn from the fact that biographer Howard Johns was known for revealing the addresses of these and other celebrities. Hmm. Don’t think that I’d put that info down on my “final Jepoardy” slate.
I am also not so crazy about the organic search results, which tend to err on the side of word proximity.
Again, with a relatively narrow data set such as Wikipedia it’s not always easy to tune content analysis well to the capabilities of semantic text analysis in search engines.
Big Picture
The big picture for this early-days release of Powerset is that it is a great demonstration of how one particular source of content can be transformed through search and content federation technologies into an altogether different kind of publication.
Oftentimes I talk these days about search technologies being similar to datafeed technologies, but in this instance it’s important to recognize that search technologies are also end-publishing technologies in and of themselves that can aggregate, filter and organize content in altogether new ways that enhance the value of one or more core publications.
Using free content from Wikipedia and Freebase the Powerset technology does a good job of demonstrating this concept simply, albeit with some early growing pains.
Strategic Advice for Online Publishers
Publishers wanting to stay in the forefront of content markets are turning in droves to content federation technologies as a solution to add value to existing product sets, so expect to hear more from technologies such as Powerset that help publishers to add value rapidly.
Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published as “Powerset: Transforming Publications Through Semantic Search Technology” on May 13th 2008.