Sideline, announced on the Yahoo user interface blog, is a desktop application that displays real-time mentions of specific keywords, brands, or names. It is capable of custom search groups, advanced queries, and refreshes the application with new mentions automatically. How does it do this? It pulls keyword mentions from Twitter, of course!
All website analytical tools have their pros and cons, and many people use more than one to track their website's visitors and gather other important data. With that in mind, I've put together this list of some of the best.
All of these web applications offer a free service; while some are completely free, others offer a premium account as well.
There is an exception. I've included the Mint and Yahoo analytical software packages in this list due to their popularity, although they are not free.
While some put a lot of stock into websites such as these, I would encourage you to not do so. As they may offer one point of reference to figure out the worth of a website you own, are selling, or would like to buy, they should just be one of many other statistical references to gather data from. If nothing else, they offer a form of entertainment, and you can grab a nifty website badge from some of them to impress your friends and co-workers.
This fall, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt released the 2nd edition of their book Search Engine Marketing, Inc: Driving search traffic to your company's web site. The guide is 600+ pages and packed with practical, applicable information. I've worked my way through it once and now am heading back in to begin implementing some of their strategies.
A collection of terms and definitions from a number of Google's patent filings on Local Search (not everything discussed in these patent applications have been incorporated into Google Local search - but the interesting thing about many of these patent filings is exploring whether or not they may have been).