Let’s start off with my current favorite. BackType is a conversational search engine that scans the web for comments about your posts not necessarily on your posts. Where their original intent was to connect blog comments from one blog to another, one can see why they eventually got into the Twitter game. Using their existing technology they expanded their offerings to a site called BackTweets which became one of my favorite sites in an instant.

BackTweets keeps a fairly up to date list of all mentions of your blog. You can search for all links back to your blog or for specific posts. The data isn’t much different than Topsy’s and TweetMeme’s, I just feel like it’s the fastest and cleanest, but that’s just my personal opinion.

I think BackTweets really shines with their TweetCount widget which lets you customize everything from the color and source to weather or not you want it to be RT or “via”. Oh, and they automatically add Google Analytic parameters complements of Awe.sm. Doesn’t get much better than that. Thanks BackType!

Now on to the grandfather of Retweet tracking and indexing. TweetMeme is still my favorite Digg style Tweet aggregator for instant notification on hot topics and trends. Their RT button is probably the most used because of the websites popularity and is almost as dynamic as the BackTweet TweetCount button but falls short at color customization and Google Analytics integration. However, to compensate for the lack of GA integration, they have developed their own analytics that can track the viral nature of Retweets as they spread throughout Twitter. While I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit, I prefer integrated analytics where available and prefer the BackTweets button for this reason.

I had heard of Topsy but never really learned what they are about. Topsy is basically a Twitter search engine that ranks links being shared based on relevance and influence of those sharing the links. They offer a Retweet Count button as well as a list of all tweets linking back to your posts. What really struck me was that they also displayed which shortened URLs were used as well as all tags and authors involved in the process. This could become my new favorite dashboard for viewing Twitter activity around a specific link but it will take a bit more before I switch over to their Retweet button.

Some Things Worth Mentioning

Bit.ly uses BackType’s data to display conversations relevant to your shortened links

TweetMeme has a site very similar to it called Retweet.com however it is pretty much just a ripoff of TweetMeme and TweetMeme seems to work much better

Sometimes, BackType’s data will differ from TweetMeme and Topsy however the BackType TweetCount widget seems to display correct data

Be sure to check out this post from SEOptimise for a nice break down of the Retweet buttons mentioned in this post.

- Photo by Steve took it