I have a long history loving and writing about that classic tradition, the NORAD Santa Tracker service. It’s just gone live for those who are ready to start searching for St. Nick. While you won’t actually get to track him until Christmas Eve, there are resources at the site now.

Either I or someone else here at Search Engine Land will update this post with a deeper review, but my understanding from Google — which coproduces the site — is that everything is virtually the same as last year. The main difference is that there will be a plug-in for Google Earth on the web you can use, rather than having to use Google Earth through an application. Google writes about that more here.

Aside from that, I’ll point you to my posts from last year for now that should give a good rundown of what’s there now:

• Santa Tracker 2008: Google & NORAD Team Up Again
• 8 Santa Trackers For Christmas Eve 2008, From NORAD Santa To Twitter

Come the big night, I’ll also do an updated post with the latest info. Happy Holidays!