Here’s an interesting site called TweetBeep that just launched. Sorta like Google Alert, with TweetBeep, you can be alerted when someone “twitts” about your selected keywords. Looks like this one might be big, so keep your eye on this one.

TweetBeep allows you to track various keywords published throughout the Twitter world. All you have to do is enter your Twitter account information, the keyword you want to track, and the email address you want the notifications sent to to keep updated on what’s being said about you, your site, your product, or anything else that matters to you. It even finds the links that include your keyword in the original URL no matter if they’ve been shortened by tinyURL or some other similar service. You can have the tracker refreshed every few hours or every day, depending on how often you like to receive notifications.

via killerstartups

Today, I will talk briefly about how to identify splogs and protect yourself from losing your precious little Pagerank.

First and foremost, if you are a blogger, (and this article is intended for a blogger) you need to be aware of trackbacks left on your blog.

Now, most trackbacks will show up on your comments list. Although Akismet does a pretty good job, sometimes you really gotta keep a keen eye on things and make sure splogs don’t leave you a trackback.

Now, when you get a trackback, to protect yourself, all you have to do is check the link and make sure it’s a blog written by a human being. If it’s not, simply mark it as spam and delete it.

There is a better way so you do less work by using some Wordpress plugins.

I use Simple Trackback Validation plugin which checks each trackback to see if there’s a valid website linking to it. This won’t stop splogs but will cut down on your spam checking and filter out most of trackback hackers.

If you have a blog with a pretty good blog, I actually recommended you disable trackbacks completely. I have seen some of my big blogger friends do this, and it works. Simply by limiting the links going out, you can raise your Pagerank, especially if your blog is getting big.

To turn off trackbacks, simply go to Settings->Discussion then unselect Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).

To Google, trackbacks are nothing but links going out, it doesn’t really help your Pagerank unless you are just starting out.

Now, this probably beats the whole purpose of trackbacks but in this fast moving Web2.0 world, sometimes you gotta do what you need to do to get the job done.

I hope that helps you from losing Pagerank and next time I will show you how to protect yourself against Blog Post Theft and Splogs.