LBi London

Posted by Simon Howland December 23rd, 2009

Google Chrome now has over a thousand extensions. We’ve looked through them and picked out the top 15 Chrome add-ons for SEOs.

Its technical superiority over Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and a bevy of invaluable add-ons such as the superb Web Developer Toolbar, Firebug and SeoQuake have kept me well and truly onside with Firefox in recent years.

However, the sheer number of new and handy add-ons already available for the Google Chrome browser is pushing it tantalisingly close to being adopted as my browser of choice, despite recent criticism levelled at Google over online privacy.

I am not yet entirely convinced that Chrome should be my default browser, although if the Firefox add-ons I currently use on a daily basis are ported to Chrome it would be hard to deny Chrome’s speed and sleek design being integrated into my working set-up. That said, there are some really useful extensions already available, and I’ve listed 15 of my top recommendations for Google Chrome add-ons for SEO:

1. TabSearch – Absolutely essential if you have lots of windows open, this add-on drops down and allows you to scroll through currently open tabs.
2. AddToAny Extension (Unofficial) – A really useful tool for bookmarking the current site in your browser on multiple platforms, including tweeting a link via bit.ly.
3. Chrome SEO – My favourite SEO extension for quick stats such as PageRank, inlinks and server information for the currently site.
4. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google) – Allows you to speedily open various common document formats from within the browser.
5. Google Similar Pages beta (by Google) – This is a pretty neat add-on for finding additional information on a topic of interest. Simply click the button and alternative pages pop up with screenshots.
6. Ibrii – One of my favourites, this allows you to easily copy and share snippets via a number of social media platforms. Highlight text or hover over an image to enable drag-and-drop sharing.
7. META SEO inspector – Although the always-on-top nature of this add-on can be a pain at times, as it covers part of the content, it can be toggled on an off and displays the meta tags of the current page. Especially useful for quickly reviewing a site.
8. Pendule – With additional features this could be a killer add-on. The current functionality is similar to a cut-down version of the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox, including the ability to toggle CSS and images.
9. Quick Bookmarks – The bookmarks can be added in a normal toolbar, but are hidden by default. This extension provides easy access to your bookmarks from the toolbar and is my personal favourite.
10. RSS Subscription Extension (unofficial) – Adds an RSS icon to the address bar if one exists on the current page, allowing one-click RSS subscriptions.
11. IE Tab – Similar to the well-known Firefox extension (which runs on the same back-end as Chrome) this allows you to view a site in Internet Explorer’s rendering engine with Google Chrome itself, displaying the current site in a browser tab.
12. Tweetings – A neat Twitter add-on with notifications, tweets and retweets, all in a simple interface. I’m sure there will be many of these soon, but this is a good start.
13. Wikipedia Companion – Mini Wiki Browser – A simple and easy to use interface for querying Wikipedia from within the Chrome toolbar. Similar to the mobile site, you get the sections collapsed by default which makes it easy to scan an article.
14. Google Wave Notifier – One to watch, get Wave update notifications from within Chrome. I suspect we will see a plethora of Wave applications soon, but like the Twitter add-on above, this is here and now.
15. Greasemetal – Allows Greasemonkey scripts to run on Chrome.

Do you know of any useful SEO plugins for Google Chrome? Feel free to discuss your favourites in the comments below.

Tags: browsers, chrome, Google

6 comments Add This