Reinvigorate – Real-time web analytics with heat maps. Ooh, the colors are so pretty – all the way to the bank. This service is A-M-A-Z-ing. Monthly, daily, hourly and page level details plus the ability to name tag registered visitors.  If real-time web data is your caffeine, then this is the tool for you. There’s a dumbed down freebie version and a free trial. The paid service is very low cost starting at $10 per month.

TwentyFeet – This is a web-based dashboard that aggregates social stats from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and bit.ly all on one place. It pings you when events are triggered and costs less than a Starbucks “blah blah latte” for an entire year. I can see it as a handy tool for a small business or no budget situation where you want to track basic social media sites. The site is run (and funded) by a German web agency in Wiesbaden called //SEIBERT/MEDIA.

SocialFlow – From the same folks that brought us TweetDeck and bit.ly, this social media engagement SaaS promises to “say the right thing to the right people at the right time” on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz.  Scary. If it works, scary awesome.  According to Om Malik, SocialFlow works by optimizing message format (hashtags + link shortening), then posts messages during your audience’s most receptive time periods, measures CTR, retweets and followers. Repeat. I just signed up for beta access so we’ll see if I can make it into the SocialFlow club.

Ontolo - From the link building virtuosos Garrett French and Ben Wills comes the new Ontolo Linkbuilding toolset described by my pal Andy Beal as “Link Building on Steroids“. Ben and Garrett have been diligent and generous in getting us a view and test, which I appreciate and hope to take advantage of soon. For now, my experience is based on the free public demo and from what I’ve heard, it’s an impressive link building tool that will save a ton of time when doing link analysis.

InfluenceFinder – This new link research tool makes MajesticSEO even better with wicked filtering options for link analysis. And we all know that links are the electricity that makes the Google world go ’round. The website is lite on information and heavy on the 7 day free trial, so you’ll need to sign up to get a look. Aaron Wall did a review here.

Funny how all these new tools conjoin two words for their names. Afraid of a little space between words, eh? Oh, what? Ah, yes. TopRank does the same thing. Damn these companies are smart.

What new analytics or efficient SEO / Social Media Marketing tools have you been testing?

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Apparently, Google is testing a redesign and logo which you can see in this home page screen shot:

The logo has changed and the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons are blue rather than gray. But the biggest changes are on the search results page. There are three columns rather than two:

I’ll mention some of the specific changes but I have to say, my initial (and critical) opinion of the updated search results page is “awesome”. I liked it immediately.

Left Column: Colorful blue headings and icons are added for categories of search. The number of initial categories displayed varies by the search query. When I searched on “playstation 3″, Everything, News, Blogs and Shopping showed as the default search categories. You can expand categories to include images, video, books, maps and forums.  What initially displays and the remaining categories to expand varies by the query.

Related search queries are listed below that followed by options for time intervals which are from the Options feature.

Additional search tools can be expanded including even more related searches and a timeline.  I did a vanity search for my name and the timeline went back to 1960!

Standard search are displayed as a default, but under expanded search tools options for Page images, Fewer shopping sites, More shopping sites and Page previews are available.

Middle Column. The search results for news, blogs, images, video etc all stay within the same format as standard search, although shopping is unique.  There is a preview page image search option that is pretty handy, allowing you to see a thumbnail of the page.

I did notice related queries suggested at the top of the page on some queries, but not all.  Normally, related queries are displayed at the bottom of the search results page.

Search queries for items that invoke local search results like “pizza” display best match web sites on the top consistently in my tests and the map displayed in the local listings is much wider than it is now.

Right Column. I didn’t really notice major changes in the sponsored links. Recent changes in the right column have included movement left, closer to the organic search results as well as the inclusion of images in the sponsored listings vs all text.

What does this mean for SEO? For Social Media Marketing? With the efforts to disambiguate search results by offering search category filters, it makes sense for content publishers and therefore, website marketers to ensure Digital Asset Optimization efforts are in effect.  By showing the time sensitive search options all the time, it will bring more attention to fresh content.

I think core strategies that are focused towards creative content creation and promotion in multiple media formats will do well in a new Google.   Besides the aesthetic changes shown above, I noticed several instances of Google indexing and ranking images for text displayed within the image when that text did not appear elsewhere.  It could have been due to anchor text of incoming links, but I think it’s worth watching.

Along those lines, I suspect with YouTube’s automatic captioning feature that uses speech recognition software to convert the audio of a video into text, that even more implications will be seen for rich media in the search engine optimization space.

As far as I can tell, this new Google design was reported on Google Blogscoped yesterday where you can get the copy/paste code to check out the redesigned Google yourself. SEL also mentioned it and I would expect that if this is indeed a new change Google will make permanently, that Danny Sullivan will provide a comprehensive analysis and info direct from Google.

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While you can use search.twitter.com advanced features to find individuals using specific criteria, it can be more productive for finding companies or commercial users of Twitter via a managed list.

Here are a few resources for finding Twitter accounts for brands, companies, executives, analysts and journalists via directories and lists.

Twibs.com – Alphabetical Directory and search engine of 5,368 businesses on Twitter with a voting option to see which profiles are featured on the home page. Each business Twitter account has a profile showing latest Tweets and others’ Tweets about that user.

Twellow.com – Directory and search engine of Twitter users. Allows customization of profiles, categories and addition of links to other social services. Grabs publicly available messages from Twitter then analyzes and organizes them into the categories found at Twellow.com. Users can add themselves also. Features “Twellowhood” to find local Tweeple.

Tracking Twitter – The Electric Artists Twitter Tracker is a real-time listing of the top media, entertainment, and consumer product feeds EA is following on Twitter – Broken down into the following categories: Brands, Media, Television and Celebrities.

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples – This list published by Peter Kim shows much more than Twitter, but you can sort the list of brands using social media by type, then scroll down to the “Microblogging” section.

Media on Twitter – This is a wiki created by @PRsarahevans with the help of a few friends as a resource of contact information for journalists and bloggers around the world.

Other useful Twitter user discovery lists and directories include:

Social Brand Index – Jonathan Kash maintiains this index of Twitter accounts sorted by: Business, Education, Entertainment, Executives & Notable Individuals, For Consumers, Government & Politics, Housing Market, Media, Non-Profit, Organizations, Service Providers, Social Properties, Technology and Travel.

Analyst Twitter Directory – Listing of industry Analysts on Twitter by Carter Lusher of SageCircle.

Brands That Tweet – Collection of brand names Twitter accounts from Paul Dunay. Many of the accounts listed are squatters and not managed by the brands.

C-Level Tweeters – Another collection from Paul Dunay of CEOs, CTO’s and CMO’s. There are many more in the comments.

The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter – Wendy Piersall has assembled this list of Tweeting moms plus many more additions in the comments.

Ultimate Small Business Twitter List – Anita Campbell and friends have compiled this list of people and organizations to consider following on Twitter if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of small businesses.

Which topical or categorically specific Twitter directories, wikis or lists did we miss?

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