TheNewPR Wiki has a great set of elements that every company should be monitoring. For web 2.0 companies, many of these are obvious, like tracking your company URL, tags, digg, and other social news sites. But, for many companies not typically in the tech loop, searching for their name on Flickr is about as alien as asking the cows what they think of their product.

As social sites gain popularity, companies can and should start tracking everything from YouTube to MySpace. The number of things to track in the list currently stands at 29, and could probably grow to at least twice that with a little more thought.

But, what if you’re only one person with very limited time starting a new site? Here is a list of sites I typically use to track my buzz on a daily basis. This is by no means a complete list, but, combined, they can be used as a quick barometer on how well your marketing is doing. Perusing these sites is typically how I start my day (or night).

• Technorati: Still the most comprehensive blog aggregator and search engine. Use it to see who’s talking about you.
• Google Search: Should be a no brainer. Use it to see what sites have used your brand’s name.
• Google Link Search: Search Google with the query “link:your site’s url“. You’ll see all the sites that are linking to yours.
• Google Groups Search: Newgroups are still one of the most active places on the net. Yet, many people forget they even exist (I sometimes do).
• Alexa and Alexaholic: Great for comparing how your site’s traffic is doing with respect to competitors. However, take this with a grain of salt, since Alexa only monitors a small sample of web surfers (those that have the Alexa toolbar).
• del.icio.us and digg: Both of these have a lot of activity, especially among the avante guarde techies.
• stumbleupon URL page: Go to http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/your site’s url/ to see reviews that stumbleuponers leave. They are a really active and passionate community, and leave good comments about your site (if it’s already been stumbled upon).
• socialmeter: A relatively new aggregate search site that quickly tallies the number of times your url appears in many popular social bookmarking and search sites. It also links to the relevant search pages for each of the bookmarking sites.
• TagFetch: Another tag search engine which is more visual than socialmeter, and has a richer feature set.

If you know of any more valuable search sites that have helped you track your brand, leave a comment about it below.