Twittorati just launched to the public within the last few hours, and I’m already a big fan. It quickly translates the top bloggers as deemed by Technorati into a stream of tweets and tweeters.

So, for example, clicking on the link to the number 2 blog, TechCrunch, in the left sidebar will show recent tweets by the official Techcrunch twitter account as well as tweets from Arrington, MG, Kincaid, and others.

There’s also an option for top links, which shows the top linked stories from authors from the top 100 authority blogs - though I wonder if these bloggers will tweet stories from external blogs, and if so, how often?

The search results on Twittorati are pretty interesting as well. Much less spam, if any, when compared to Twitter Search

Now that Twitter shows a user’s location in another user’s follower list, it can be much easier to find new people to follow.

Interested in finding someone interested in travel who lives in California? Now you can just go to the Followers Page for a Large Travel Tweeter and quickly select to follow any user who lives there.

Just read this on Elliots Blog. Bing apparently favors generic domain names even more than Google. So, for instance if you are searching for ‘casino’ , on Bing, casino.com will show up as number one, but on Google, casino.com only shows up as number five.

I definitely think Bing will be around for a while, mostly because of Microsoft forcing it down users throats via Internet Explorer and via Live.com and MSN , so this gives holders of generic domain names even more reason to develop them.

I don’t hold any, but I wonder if Bing gives more wait to a site’s URL in general, or if they only give more wait to a category-defining domain name.

That may be the subject of another post…

I do know that my travel site already gets as much traffic from Bing as it does from Yahoo, but that may be because Bing is heavily advertising their travel functionality as well as redirecting all traffic coming from Farecast to their search box.

Kind of a no brainer, but recently I was so focused on optimizing against the keywords ‘traveling from’ (as two separate words) that as of a few weeks ago, I no longer show up on the first page of Google for the word ‘travelingfrom.’ The site after all is travelingfrom.com

Getting repeat traffic from Google, and especially from people who chose to access sites by using google search rather than the address bar, is a big part of this site’s marketing strategy, so now I need to go back and update a few links here and there to get to the top of the Google results page again.

Step 2 will be to no longer have Google suggest separating the words, but I will need a bunch of inbound links before that happens.

Techcrunch is reporting that nearly 10% of their visitors came in through Twitter in the last 30 days. This is more than any other social bookmarking site, most notably Digg and TechMeMe, and is only surpassed by the almighty Google as the top referral source.

Also in their report, only 23% of their visits come from Direct Traffic (which usually also includes traffic sources that cannot be defined by Google Analytic’s code)

So can other sites start generating hundreds of thousands of visits from Twitter?

Probably not, as I have always thought that Twitter can be used to augment a blog’s traffic if that blog already has authoritative status, ie Techcrunch. For the rest of us, accomplishing this feet is much harder, regardless of how much time you spend friending bots or social media ‘mavens’ that will automatically follow you back.

Still, there are hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter every day, sharing links, looking for cool stuff, or just talking about the weather, so I think Twitter can be one of the best places to find both qualified and unqualified readers.

I’ve copied the latest Wikipedia geo stats below. Its interesting that there is not a direct correlation between the population of a country and how active that country is on Wikipedia. Other variables to account: weather, literacy, availability of computers, lack of nightlife (kidding on the last one)

I just sat through a Jimmy Wales presentation at AdTech, and he presented the following data for the most popular languages on Wikipedia. Please note that this data is valid for the current date, April 21, 2009

English - 2.8 million articles

German, French, Dutch, Japanese, Italian - 500K + articles

Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese - 250K + articles

Chinese - nearly 250K articles

Wikipedia was banned in China for 3 years, which accounts for the lack of articles in Chinese.

I think this data could be particularly useful when prioritizing geographies for building communities as well as for building translation services for existing communities.

Update: Seeqpod traffic is clearly dropping after filing for bankruptcy protection from EMI.

EMI might not like them, but Seeqpod is still growing steadily. Looks to me like they have doubled their users in the last year.

Seeqpod and TheSixtyOne are currently my two favorite sources for free music on the web. Seeqpod lets you access songs posted across the blogosphere, while thesixtyone has fostered a community of music fans, where bands see a value in uploading their music.

Steps to find your Wordpress API Key:

1. Login to your Wordpress account on wordpress.com
2. Go to your profile URL - http://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/profile.php
3. Your API key should be showing in the top left, just below your profile name.

Done.

Something that was the focus of one of the sessions I went to at the web 2.0 conference last week was the three types of search keywords, and how different types of keywords can reflect a user’s likelihood to convert or not.  The keyword itself can reflect either a need for information, a likelihood to be shopping, or an intent to purchase.

Words with the most searches tend to be searches for information: Used Cars, Britney Spears, USB.  These users tend to be less likely to purchase, they are mostly curious, though they may be making a purchase eventually.

The second type of search is for shopping.  These terms become more specific:  Reliable Used Cars, Britney Spears CDs, USB Drives.

The third, and most lucrative type of search term reflects the highest intent to purchase:  Used Car Dealership San Francisco, Britney Spears Toxic Download, USB Drive for Mac.

Though keywords reflecting an intent to purchase have quite a smaller volume than informational keywords, combined, these keywords can make up just as much search volume.  You’ll just have to address each term individually or in small groups.

One final note, I tend to notice that words in the plural tend to reflect an interest in shopping, where as a word in the singular can reflect either information or intent to purchase, depending on how specific it is.

These three types of keywords are important to keep in mind when buying keywords, buying domains, or optimizing content for organic traffic.

We all knew it was coming.  We all blogged it, tweeted it, and left comments on other people’s blogs regarding it.  Twitter is turning into a search and discovery engine before our eyes.

Just today, they announced and implemented (without any large whales getting in the way) , a search box, search trends, and search results, all from the comfort of your very own profile page.  Seamlessly see what people are talking about and find web results without having to think at all.

I’m a big fan, and I think this is only the first step.  What I want to see now is a Twitter search function that only brings up tweets that include links to outside sites, and I want Twitter to rank these tweets based on the number of followers, retweets, and links to twitter profiles.  Now THAT would be a search engine of the future.