One of the most competitive spaces these days seems to be real time information on the Web. Twitter came on the scene and was able to do wonders with real time searching. Breaking stories were found through this new phenomen of  "tweeting" and searching via hashtags (#) , so trending topics take higher rank in search results. The other big boys couldn't sit back and watch though...it was only a matter of time before they jumped in on the real time search results action.

Facebook now offers real time search as well. Facebook allows you to search through status updates, shared media, and pages you follow. It also offers a tabbed approach to look through different categories of search (similar to images, documents, etc on Google). Users also have the ability to share updates with "Everyone" instead of just friends. Could there be any potential in being able to search friends of friend's posts?  This would allow a much larger audience to be apart of the action, but who knows.

Google also has a new version that is testing now called Caffeine. It is supposed to be more real time search tool as well. Google's plan is to have Caffeine be faster, more accurate, and return more results.

Read more to find out some of the not so well known players that have jumped on the real time search bandwagon over the past few months.  There is a brief description of the service with a few of my notes from visiting/testing each of the search engines. "Charles Gibson" was the main search phrase used, as he was recently replaced by Diane Sawyer, so results are reflective of that search.

I tend to spend a lot of time on conference calls these days. I assume that is because in general, when you work contract or for an agency, you usually charge by the hour, and it makes more sense to call in than to have someone pay travel expenses. More often than not, as a call gets going there is a little awkward shuffling, even when an agenda goes out, for the call to actually get underway. That is a great time to ask a question to get everyone in the conference call mood and get things rolling.

For a SEO strategy call, I often open with a general question along the lines of, "So have you done any SEO work for your site?" The response to that, which generally chills me to the bone as if I was stuck in a slasher movie is, "We did some research, read some stuff, and have started implementing things." Oh no, as it turns out, the company was really a quiet loner who always kept to themselves...

Delphic Sage launches our latest white paper this week - Demystifying Web Analytics.

Analytics represents a wide range of disciplines and methodologies. The focus of this white paper is on using web analytics to grow your business with commonly available packaged applications such as Google Analytics or Web Trends. The specific portion of web analytics that we will dive into will be mostly focused toward on-site analytics - referring to the measurement of events on your site, rather than measuring off-site metrics such as buzz, share of voice, or visibility.