Tonight I wanted to look at one of the least-discussed, but most popular set of tools on the web - the browser toolbar. Although toolbars have been around since the mid-1990's, their most dominant era (from the late '90's-early 2000's) has been interpreted as a sign of the toolbar's demise. But rumors of the toolbar's death are, in my opinion, premature. While they may not have the penetration rates they once did, the number of toolbars on the market and the resurgence of open-source and non-search-based toolbars is breathing new life into the old (at least by web standards) medium.
Obviously, web developers and Internet marketers of all stripes are still heavily invested in toolbar usage, particularly with the development of independent toolbars for Firefox. But, that doesn't necessarily mean we should ignore the rest. Below, I've given a rough overview of the most popular toolbars on the web and their features; I've also given my personal opinions about the value of the plugins for both regular users and Internet professionals:
The Google Toolbar - https://toolbar.google.com
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Features:
- Search bar with suggestions & history
- Links to news and other vertical search options at Google
- Ability to save pages to Google favorites
- PageRank indicator (optional at install)
- Pop-up blocker
- Spell check for forms (and auto-correction features)
- Autofill for forms (to automatically insert common personal information)
- Send-to feature (used to email, post to Google's Blogger platform, or send an SMS with a URL)
- Search highlighting of referral keywords
- Optional features also include the ability to use translate, vote on pages (unclear what Google does with this data), and add other vertical search and custom buttons
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium
I'm guessing the Google toolbar was much more valuable to the average user before the advent of built-in-browser search bars, but it still has some redeeming qualities. Certainly the popup blocker (though already built in to most modern browsers), spell check, auto-fill in for forms, and translation functions are engaging. The ability to highlight search phrases may be useful to some.
Value to Web Professionals: Low
Simple - the Google PageRank data can be an interesting signal if you know how to interpret it properly (and ignore it when necessary). However, with Firefox toolbars offering the same data alongside far more valuable features, it's unlikely to garner much interest from serious marketers or developers.
The Yahoo! Toolbar - https://toolbar.yahoo.com
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Features:
- Search bar with suggestions & vertical search options
- Yahoo! Bookmarking
- Connection to Yahoo! Mail & My Yahoo!
- Direct Links to Yahoo! Answers & Yahoo! Games
- Anti-spy optional plugin
Value to Ordinary Users: Low
For those users who are heavy devotees of Yahoo!'s other services, the toolbar provides some fair value. For the majority, however, the features simply don't deliver. Yahoo! could almost certainly be more creative and innovative with the options in the toolbar, but it's barely changed since the late '90's. Plugins to Yahoo! properties like Del.icio.us, Upcoming, & Flickr aren't here, even in basic link format, and with no website or URL rating system (like Google's PageRank), it seems Yahoo! in content to let the toolbar stagnate.
Value to Web Professionals: Low
It's unlikely that any developer or web marketer is going to use the Yahoo! toolbar, unless they're heavily tied in to Yahoo!'s other services like Mail, My Yahoo!, Answers, etc. Even in this latter case, the buttons on the toolbar are little more than links, so a bookmark sidebar is probably more convenient. The only truly interesting piece of data is the search suggest information, but that can be found through Yahoo! search as well. I'm disappointed also to see no options for web marketers that would give a more plug-and-play data experience with Yahoo! Site Explorer - that's a big missed opportunity, IMO.
The Microsoft Live Search Toolbar - https://live.toolbar.com
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Features:
- Search bar with suggestions and vertical search options (including some external properties)
- Direct news links to MSNBC sources
- Link to gallery for additional buttons and options
- Direct links to MSN portal content
- Search term highlighting and snapshot highlighting
- Maps links for addresses on a page
- Hotmail/Microsoft/Outlook Email link and sending options
- Windows Live Spaces blog/publish options
- Direct links to Live Messenger
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium
If you're a heavy user of Microsoft's online offerings, the Live toolbar offers a bit more than Yahoo! and interacts quite well with the browser and web pages. I was impressed not only with the aesthetic fit (and low impact on the browser itself), but the relative usability of the various buttons (which could simply be personal preference). Once again, however, the primary features of the toolbar interact primarily with Microsoft products and Microsoft properties on the web. There's nothing revolutionary here, nor is there anything one can't live without.
Value to Web Professionals: Low
The toolbar is nearly useless to web professionals, who are very unlikely to be consumers of a majority of Microsoft's online offerings and services (with the possible exception of their popular email). Disappointingly, there's no interfacing with Live.com's webmaster tools or data, either.
The Ask.com Toolbar - https://toolbar.ask.com
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Features:
- Search bar (no suggest tools, though)
- Search term highlighting
- News search & news links
- Resize content
- Weather link
- Pop-up blocker
- Maps links
- Shopping links
- Links to "MyStuff" at Ask.com
- Additional buttons available with customization
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium
This might actually be my favorite of the search toolbars if it only had a strong search suggest function. I think that for ordinary users (I'm envisioning people like my father and grandparents), the links are relevant, useful, and functional. I'm a big fan of the resize button in particular, and the direct link to weather, maps, and news, though available in other toolbars (weather can be added as a custom button in Google, Yahoo!, and Live), is a nice feature. Ask's web interface for the toolbar is also the best designed of the bunch, with a better user experience than even Google's (at least from a simplicity perspective).
Value to Web Professionals: Low
As with Live, there's virtually nothing here that would interest developers or marketers. Interfacing with Bloglines, webmaster commands, or offering Page Rank-like data (after all, what does Ask realistically have to lose) would certainly make it more appealing.
The AOL Toolbar - https://toolbar.aol.com
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Features:
- Search bar with vertical search options
- Direct links to AOL mail, Instant Messenger (AIM), AOL Games, & weather
- MapQuest address and directions plug-and-play feature
- Customizable buttons links
- My Favorite - the Surfometer!
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium
I went in expecting to be disappointed and was pleasantly surprised. If you're an AOL user, the toolbar is probably a very good fit (tying in AIM & AOL mail directly), and the interface with MapQuest, weather, news, and other links is solid, too. Surprisingly, there's a ton of button options and an easy-to-use gallery for setting them up. Of course, my favorite part is the built-in "Surfometer," which monitors your web page views over time and reports them to you - even offering ranks as your surfing grows. Honestly, if they added the ability to compare yourself against other surfers and charted your visit habits by the sites and verticals you browse, I think I'd be in love, but then again, I'm a total geek :)
Value to Web Professionals: Low
If, like me, you really like the idea of the Surfometer, Google's desktop software actually does a better job. There's nothing else here that would particularly appeal to web pros, though the ease of customization options might make it slightly more attractive than some of the others.
The Alexa Toolbar - https://toolbar.alexa.com
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Features:
- Search options with the major engines (and Alexa's internal search)
- Info bar on sites visited (as shown above - note that the information for SEOmoz is now 3 years old)
- Traffic rank and trend data (as indicated by the number and arrow direction)
- Related sites list
- Popup manager
- Direct links to Amazon & Archive.org
- Print button
Value to Ordinary Users: Low
The Alexa toolbar is designed to be a competitive information tool, and as such, offers virtually no functionality, other than the ability to get (highly inaccurate) website popularity data and contact information (which is also spurious) for the sites a user visits. It's too bad, because the value of Alexa's data lies in the number of people they can get to adopt their toolbar. The more ordinary and "average" those users are, the better Alexa's data will be, yet they really fail to serve this market effectively.
Value to Web Professionals: Medium to High
It's not for everyone, but for most web professionals, using the Alexa toolbar (and feeding data back to them through your usage) is valuable. This is true simply because very little usage of a website on a regular basis by just a few Alexa toolbar users is enough to propel its rankings. There are enough uninformed decision makers at businesses, ratings services, investment funds, and competitive firms who still trust Alexa data to make it worthwhile to game the system. In addition, the related sites data and site info can be useful for competitive intelligence (so long as they're taken with a relative grain of salt).
The Compete.com Toolbar - https://tools.compete.com
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Features:
- Search options with major engines
- Direct links to Compete and MyCompete panel
- Trust rating
- Competitive data on the website(s) being browsed
- Pop-up of traffic profile for sites
- Direct link to any "deals" available on the site
Value to Ordinary Users: Low to Medium
The most compelling part of the Compete toolbar for ordinary users are the twofold offer of a highlighted "deals" button if special offers are available on the site (which worked well for me on sites like Amazon & Gap) and the "trust" stamp. It's probably not enough to get thousands of regular surfers flocking, but it's better than what Alexa's offering by a long shot.
Value to Web Professionals: Medium to High
Compete's data isn't fantastic, but in some cases it's a good deal better than Alexa (in others, it's just as bad or worse). However, since Compete's fast becoming a darling in the tech and media startup world, influencing the rankings even a little (and seeing what the competition is up to) isn't a bad choice. If Compete took the additional step that Alexa takes and listed related sites, it might be a bit more valuable, and certainly as their data pool grows, it's possible they'll improve in usefulness.
The NetCraft Toolbar - https://toolbar.netcraft.com
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Features:
- Ability to report phishing sites
- Trust/risk rating metric
- Domain and business investigation links
- Competitive data (age, rank, site info, etc.)
- Direct links to Netcraft pages and services
Value to Ordinary Users: Low to Medium
Although the toolbar does offer some information designed to protect consumers, the phishing notification appears limited to financial sites. I visited a few domains that carry some nasty malware, pop-unders, etc., and they had high trust ratings from Netcraft. The ability to report phishing might be valuable, but unless you're consistently under the threat, Netcraft's probably not that useful and the lack of a built-in search bar seriously hampers it (though since Firefox and IE both have them now, it's not as important).
Value to Web Professionals: Low to Medium
The competitive intelligence data from Netcraft isn't terrific, but it's not completely useless. More valuable than the ranks and numbers are the links to investigate host data and site information.
The StumbleUpon Toolbar - https://www.stumbleupon.com
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Features:
- Click "Stumble" to be taken to a random webpage that others have liked
- Choose verticals (images, videos, topics) to stumble exclusively through these
- Thumb up/down - share your opinion of a page with other stumblers
- Tag, review, and read reviews of pages
- Stumble through a single website (in case you want to find all the cool stuff on NPR or YouTube)
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium to High
StumbleUpon is some of the most fun you can have on the web, and the process of discovery, ability to rate, and possibility of finding amazing new stuff is irresistible. It could just be the curious cat in me, but everyone I've ever shown StumbleUpon to loves it. From concept to execution, it's one of the best applications around. No surprise, then, that SU has built an audience of 4+ million users and is one of the top traffic drivers for many social sites, blogs, and news domains.
Value to Web Professionals: High
If you're a marketer, developer, or designer, using StumbleUpon to submit your best content and to see what your peers have produced is essential. The traffic SU sends and the ability to get in front of some very savvy, potentially target-demographic eyeballs makes it a must-have.
Search Status for Firefox Toolbar - https://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
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Features:
- Actively displays PageRank & Alexa Rank in graphical format
- Shows Compete data (in the newer version)
- Enables highlighting of nofollow links
- Direct links to link reports, archive.org, whois, and other search reporting data (indexing & links)
- Pops up meta tags, robots.txt, and keyword density & repetition information
- Highlights keywords
Value to Ordinary Users: Low
Unless you know how to use the tools in the plugin, it's virtually useless. Average web surfers aren't going to find SearchStatus, and they won't be inclined to use it - there's simply no value.
Value to Web Professionals: High
Anyone in SEO, design, development, or website creation can benefit tremendously from this plugin. Not only are the Alexa, Compete, & PageRank data handy (though not always particularly useful), the quick links and nofollow highlighting are essential. You'll save yourself a considerable amount of time with this toolbar (note - it's only compatible on Firefox and leverages GreaseMonkey - there's no IE version).
Microsoft Developer Toolbar - https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en
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Features:
- View & modify HTML elements on the fly
- Enable/disable code and images
- Inspect CSS properties
- Validate & cache code & pages
Value to Ordinary Users: Low
For 99% of the web surfing population, the toolbar carries no value whatsoever. If you aren't designing, developing or testing web pages, the toolbar's usefulness approaches zero.
Value to Web Professionals: Low to High
While there are some clever uses for the toolbar for marketers, particularly those who are familiar with HTML and CSS and who want to investigate or compare usage, the majority of this group probably won't get much value out of this toolbar. However, for developers (and designers and testers), the value is particularly high - IE often presents some difficult issues for CSS compatability, so having a toolbar like this in IE to examine tags and properties is essential.
Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox - https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Features:
- View & modify HTML elements on the fly
- Enable/disable code and images
- Inspect CSS properties & disable/edit
- Make comments/notes on web pages (for later retrieval/viewing)
- DOM inspector
- Validate & cache code & pages
- Direct links to Speed Reports
- View/delete cookie & session information
- And numerous other developer-specific features
Value to Ordinary Users: Low
As with the Microsoft developer toolbar, almost none. Virtually no ordinary user will have any idea what to do with it.
Value to Web Professionals: Low to High
For web marketers, the value is somewhat limited (though, if you're HTML and CSS savvy, it can be an interesting tool for examining code and page structure). For developers, however, it's one of the perennial favorites - the full featured toolbar gives coders and designers access to an impressively wide array of features that makes examining, code-checking, and competitive dev intelligence a breeze. The toolbar was clearly designed with efficient building and editing in mind and it shows.
Groowe Search Toolbar - https://groowe.com/
Features:
- Search multiple engines and vertical sources
- Get the Toolbar Functionality from Google, Yahoo!, Live, & Ask by rotating through
- Set preferences & add custom buttons & sources
Value to Ordinary Users: Medium to High
If you're a power searcher or simply want to have multiple toolbars without the massive visual space consumption, Groowe is a solid choice. There's a lot to like here, but you need to be someone who'll actually use the features, which many ordinary users might not. Still, of the search-focused toolbars, Groowe is certainly a standout.
Value to Web Professionals: Low to High
Depending on what you're doing as a marketer or developer, Groowe could be a boon or simply a replica of some features you've already got. The toolbar has a lot to offer, but again, it's going to be personal choice & habits that make it valuable. My feeling is that marketers, particularly search marketers, will find more value than developers, who probably don't need the extra search abilities on demand.
Whew! We're all though. Well, except for the big finale - and what you've all been waiting for - one of the ugliest screenshots in history:
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Oh My God, It's Hideous!
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My questions would be:
- Which are your favorites?
- What would you want to see in an ideal toolbar (that no one currently offers)?
- Do you have privacy concerns about toolbar data (as with nearly all of the toolbars above, with just a couple extensions) sending data back to the issuing company (though many allow you to turn that partially or completely off)?
p.s. Technically, this is only a smattering of the more popular toolbars on the web - there are hundreds, if not thousands of others for everything from Dogpile to Wikipedia to Web2.0/Social Media toolbars.
UPDATE: At the request of some of the comments, I've added both Groowe and the Web Developer for Firefox to the list.
None of these so called "bars" serve beer. I don't get it
Yeah, but one of them at least makes you Stumble. ;)
Good article. Web Developer for professional use and Stumble for personal.
Eh, who wants to go to a TOOLbar anyway? Bad crowd...
who wants to go to a TOOLbar anyway
That would be a Pwnedbar in web 2.0 and a Crowbar in homedepot.
the problem with top x lists that are a work in progress:
URL:/12-popular-browser-toolbars-reviewed-the-worthwhile-and-the-worthless
Post:14 Popular Browser Toolbars Reviewed - The Worthwhile and the Worthless
I'm probably gonna get thumbed down for saying this, but I don't think you should have said that installing some of the toolbars allows users to game the statistics.*
Sure, we probably do it, but this is a very public place to be saying that. And a place with responsabilities when it comes to educating SEOs (seomoz.ORG).
Otherwise I loved the roundup.
*this should prove we are not a cult, because I just questioned our leade... I mean, Rand on something.
Haha! I guess that's already a too well-known fact - so no need to keep silent :)
I don't think it is that much of a concern.
Serious gaming is going to take more than just having the toolbar installed and visiting a site a lot... there are scripts to do this*, and I'm sure anyone looking to game, is already well aware of them.
* note that I'm not encouraging anyone to take that route.
I left this on another blog that had asked about the same issue:
Hope that makes sense :)
ooops...SEOrious mistake
Groowe Toolbar. Does what all the other search toolbars do combined. Used it for years. It's a keeper.
Yeah. I like the Groowe Toobar myself. Plus it incorporates all of the social media sites so you can easily submit to your favorites when the page you are reading does not have submission/bookmarking buttons.
Just downloaded the Groowe toolbar. I added the Alexa plugin and it inspired a question...does the Alexa plugin for Groove still send the data to Alexa? If yes, does it do it only when that toolbar is active or all the time?
No it doesn't. Groowe doesn't offer that fancy features, contacting servers in the background, or something like that, you can see that in privacy policy. Basically it just redirects your browser with the GET query on desired location/search when you click a button.
BTW, I'm the author. ;)
Thanks for the info Danny, I will check on that one.
Hey, that last screenshot looks like the screen I'm looking at every day :)
My personal favorites are SearchStatus, StumbleUpon and the Webdeveloper Toolbal, which you (surprisingly) didn't review...
Seconded, Web Developer toolbar is brilliant:
https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Thirded. And the other one I use all the time is the del.icio.us toolbar for firefox. It lets you display anything you tag with certain categories - a great way of using del.icio.us as it was originally intended (as a way of storing your bookmarks).
Also - a hint for avoiding stumbleupon taking over your life - CRTL+F11 (apple+F11 on the mac) shows and hides the toolbar...
Fourthed. The Web Developer toolbar is awesome. I use it every day.
Have to say I haven't used the StumbleUpon toolbar...but I think I'm going to run off and install it forthwith.
Fifthed! I use it all the time, its a great tool. :-) Pretty sure Rand didn't review it becuase it really has no practical purpose for the average user. They've just get confused or possible freak if they accidentally turn off CSS for instance. :-D
Sixthed! (starting to sound like bugs bunny...)
Favorites use: CTRL-SHFT-Y so you can hover over anywhere in the code to see what tags are applied to a section. Great for finding out that your potential new client doesn't use H1's...
2nd favorite use: editing the CSS on the page to figure out what the hell is causing my page to load funny in IE.
Seventh! Web Developer and Stumbleupon are my two personal favourites!
indeed webdeveloper tool is really very handy for SEO and ironically web development :)
Rankquest toolbar also not reviewed - or SEOquake or SEO For Firefox - still none of those toolbars have any use for the casual user which could be why rand's not reviewed them.
Goodness, what a surprise. Stephen is commenting on a post about tools.
Yeah, if you're going to include the IE developer toolbar, you'd think FF's webdev would get a mention. Opera has one too - it's less fully featured than FF's but it does also incorporate pagerank.
Where is the FF web developer toolbar is the first thing that came to my mind as well.
It's not a toolbar but FireShot is a FF plugin useful for anyone who sends screen shots to other people. You click the button, it takes a screen shot and then you drag your mouse to highlight an area of the screen and it creates a highlighted box graphic, a movable caption bubble to type text, and a red arrow pointing from the caption bubble to the highlighted area.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
I do a lot of usability testing and bug hunting on our site and use it all the time.
cheers thats actually a really usefull plugin!
thumbs up!!
I too was surprised that you didn't include the Web Developer toolbar... one of my favorites and don't let the developer name fool ya (examples using Web Developer Toolbar for SEO).
I'm also a big fan of SearchStatus, and I too like the Netcraft one and rarely see anyone mentioning it, good on ya (yes limited use, but interesting server/hosting level research that comes in handy now and a again).
Another interesting, more designer/developer one that I pull out every now and then is FireBug.
And don't forget the User Agent Switcher to snoop around sites as Google.
Only toolbars I have ever used is the Stumbleupon, FF web developers toolbar and the google toolbar mind you the only thing I ever use on the Google toolbar is a yahoo site explorer shortcut to view inbound links to the site and page that I am viewing.
For clients with a large amount of staff who frequent on their website we do encourage them to add the Alexa toolbar, more of an ego thing for their bosses though.
Alexa is Vanity, Rankings are Sanity
Add PR to the vanity column as well...
When do I get to download the SEOmoz toolbar?
Don't forget about the RoboForm toolbar. Saves a ton of time logging to to sites.
Great Rounup.
I get the most use out of Search Status and one that is not mentioned here, SEO Open. It allows you to look at link and indexed pages data from Yahoo and Google as well Alexa stats and a few other tools. Much easier than manually entering everything.
Good call... forgot that one, the SEO Open. I have it installed and use it once in awhile.
I am using 4 toolbars:
1. Google Toolbar
2. StumbleUpon
3. Web Developer Toolbar
4. Search Status for Firefox Toolbar
These 4 toolbars are useful for user, SEOs and also web developers.
I guess you meant to add something here:
(yeah, no wonder considering the fact that you posted this at 1.54 AM)
I for one mainly use Search Status and SU.
My favorite is search engine list (I guess it's built in?) - the ability to add multiple search plugins there and reach all (well, almost all) your favorite search engines and sites proves really fascinating and saves time.
Besides, I like FF RSS readers (I use WIZZ RSS) and sometimes I use smart toolbar (I guess it's not too popular now but has some great features like checking backlinks and their anchor text).
I saw that and just deleted the rest of the sentence since I couldn't figure out what he meant to say. He can add it later if he gets that "Aha!" moment. :)
As an avid toolbar user it is hard to have them all active! If you have a slower internet connection they can also slow it down even more. They save me time and I don't have enough of it already.
Alright! Thanks Rand.
I got 2 toolbars I didn't have before.
You know I was really surprised that nobody mentions that the Google Toolbar can be setup to provide Google with data very similar to Alexa? Google asks you if this is ok when you are installing the toolbar! I'm not sure about all the details, but I believe Google uses the data to help them index pages because I've noticed that pages that weren't indexed and searchable become searchable about a day after I've visited them. I'm going to have to do some testing to see if any of the other search engine toolbars do similar things. I this value alone make it a must!?
Also everyonen seems to slam Alexa, but we all know that Compete collects data from their toolbar also. Nobody seems to badmouth them?
James - I'm actually doing an interview with someone at Compete on the blog this week, so hopefully we'll get some more questions answered about their technology and methods :)
I'd like to know how those non linked pages get indexed. Matt talks about them looking at the referrer (in the client request header?) here. Hmm. Or is it toolbar data, or both?!
Well to give you an example I noticed that my wordpress login page was showing up in Google... WHY would I want that to happen?! It's not linked anywhere and I'm sure that I'm the only person who goes to it, let's hope. So I've got Firefox setup with all the plugins that I like and I use IE for pages that I don't want indexed or tracked (checking e-mail, backend CMS of sites, etc). Let's just say I learned the hard way.
Awesome post rand - one exception though. I'll never, ever have that Alexa toolbar on my firefox. No way. hehe
I like the mention of the Alexa Toolbar. Even though you cannot really trust it, a lot of people think its absolute crap. It can still give you guidance as to where an actual site is holding. So it won't give you 100% accurate date, but you'll still get a better idea than without it.
Im also surprised Randfish didn't mention anything about the Digg toolbar. I use it all the time and it's great!
even though it's officially not a "toolbar" (and I may be a complete tool for posting) but Aaron Wall's SEO for FireFox https://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html is the s h i t e ...
It's like SEO for lazy people.
If I only had one spot spare in my toolbar belt, it would always be exclusively reserved for the FF Web Developer toolbar.
I use it on a daily basis for numerous seo and web design tasks but find it especially useful when analysing competing sites on behalf of my clients.
I seem to find new uses for it all the time and feel utterly lost and somewhat naked when I periodically work on the family home pc, which is strictly off limits from my meddling, toolbar installing hands.
That's right, my family have no interest in dissecting their favourite websites with the web dev toolbar, what's wrong with these people? :)
Hola everyone. Great post.. and great timing too! I'm an SEO noob (today is my first day at work.. yay!) and am compiling tools to use. Can anyone vouch for SEOpen? That's what I used earlier and I don't trust some of the tools included. Thanks. See ya'll around.
Hi Rivers.. You might want to start here. Enjoy, and good luck.
Thanks for the cool input! SearchStatus looks valuable and appears cool so far. I disabled the Alexa toolbar last year to avoid "Big Brother" concerns. I guess it's worth testing "exposure" for a while to checkout this toolbar.
Groowe looks like it will save time and replace the Google toolbar.
Compete - I'm trying to use their iGoogle widget to work but can't get it to load. Anyone had success with it on their Google home page?
Niche Watch - using this, too, but forgot about it until now :-) Also using RankQuest SEO but often leave it closed due to Toolbar Overload.
I often use the SEOpen Toolbar to get indexing and ranking across the Big 3 SEs and Alexa data. https://seopen.com/firefox-extension/index.php
Hi All
This is my first comment here.
Great article. There are lots of toolbars above I have not heard of before. Will try them all out.
Currently I use Firefox (of course) with web developer, seo quake, seo for firefox, StumbleUpon and components of the Google toolbar.
Seo quake not been functioning properly recently.
Wishing everyone an exSEOllent 208
Personally I hate addig toolbars for the exact reason that you have that last screenshot. I have however found a nifty toolbar that just gives quick links, numbers indexed pages, etc... https://www.seoquake.com/ check it out sometime. I often use it for a very quick assessment of a site.
Very interesting post. I am using Groowe, Web Developer and Search Status (both for FF) in the years.
Thanks Rand yea I also did not some of the other toolbars.
I have just installed the FF toolbar!
Pretty cool stuff!!
I just installed the Compete toolbar and now Firefox keeps going into Not responding. If I wait 30 seconds, it comes back, but I wondered if anyone else was having this problem? Firefox on Vista Home Premium edition.
from a pure seo point of view- the firefox search extensions are pretty handy-
Joost's search extensions for google are pretty handy, as is BoardReader and BoardTracker if your doing social media.
All these toolbars make me feel like big brother is really watching. searching from a toolbar can save time but privacy concerns make me think twice about who watching.
WOW - i just added 3 new toolbars......i guess I was a little behind the times!
SEOpen is a decent toolbar. I only use WebDev/StumbleUpon toolbars daily.
Most of the time I hit F11 on Firefox to view full-screen, and close out my toolbars. I like every bit of screen real estate I can get. I see some people with like 5 toolbards taking up a large chunk of their browser viewing area.
Hey Now Randfish,
I think the screen shot with all the toolbars is so funny looking. I prefer no toolbar since I like the idea of adding bookmarks or subscribing to feeds via a toolbar.I also like the developer tools such as viewing the CSS & Source.
Thx 4 the info,
Catto
Something else to look at is SiteAdvisor from McAfee. If your site has a little yellow or red circle next to in the SERPs that could be really bad for you.
https://www.siteadvisor.com/
Yes, this is only limited to other people that use the tool (for now). And it is too bad McAfee is the one that came out with it - I'd feel a lot better about it if CA or a real security comapny released it. Beggers can't be chosers and all that...
Rand, interesting post. There is one thing about stumbleupon that I wasn’t interested on: the idea of a random website open up on your browser (it could be kind of scary for a lot of people in terms of security, may be the older ones). It was my first impression when I signed up. May be it shows how old I am becoming J (I think I belong to other market niche now)
I'll second Danny's comment. I use the Groowe Toolbar all day, every day. Got the tip from Greg Boser on one of the early SEO Rockstars podcasts.
Great roundup!
Shareaholic for Firefox is another one that shows how many times the web page you're on has been dugg or saved to del.icio.us. Also lets one submit pages to delicious, digg, stumbleupon, google, etc.
Alexa gets medium to high? that's one point I'll have to disagree with you on. Because Alexa rankings can be gamed makes its data completely worthless. Anybody or firm who still values alexa data to make critical decisions in 2007/2008 needs to take their beer goggles off.
I agree with you in terms of the usefullness of alexa data to SEO tech people. I havent looked at in a while as its not that accurate.
However - I once got good brownie points in an interview by bringing a printout of a firms webtraffic compared to their competitors - and their management staff had never seen Alexa but were really impressed. So in 'some' situations Alexa has its uses - and as they say in politics spin the data to your advantange ;)
As a mac user I've more or less given up on toolbars. The google, alexa, firefox, and compete toolbars all crash mac firefox on a regular basis. (Every 50 pageviews I'd guess.)
Anybody have suggestions of which ones work for macs?
thats a good point you bring up - As i'm considering a mac for personal usage (i'll still be using it for work tho) and obviously toolbars and such are handy - does SEO have issues with mac's?!
Aside from a complete nonfunctioning of toolbars, I don't have issues. But yeah, the no toolbar thing is reallly a drag.
You end up bookmarking all sorts of handy tools as a result of not having access to information from toolbars.
You don't need Alexa or Compete if you have SearchStatus, right? You should wrap this article up with a recommendation or what you do or something.
You won't be sending your own browsing behavior to alexa or compete which is why Rand was recommending these individual toolbars for 'gaming the system.'
Good rundown and value assessment. A person can spend an awful lot of time figuring out which toolbars are worth cluttering up the workspace.
At one time, the SEOquake toolbar was really good, but it seems to have degraded in recent months. I find that I use the SEO for Firefox plugin more often to retrieve the same information.
If you're tasked with doing any social media monitoring, Google Web Comments can be handy, although it's technically not a toolbar.
I use one that is for Firefox only, it's from rankquest and it has pagerank, keyword density, meta tag analyzer, alexa rank, whois and a whole bunch of other features.
They have a bit of marketing going on with the toolbar but there are enough great features that make up for it.
I mostly leave the toolbar hidden and use the features it adds to right-click menu
here is the plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1471
I love the screenshot of all the toolbars open.
All we need now is more of the wide screen monitors and laptops they are promoting now and it will change the way websites are built.
Instead of scrolling down we will have to scroll horizontal.
Great post Rand my favorite tool bar is the Web Developer toolbar.
I'm still waiting for someone to create a toolbar that allows you to store your toolbar preference (those that you normally have open), then toggle those on or off as a whole... would be great for screenshots when you want to include the browser, but don't want have the shot taken up by toolbars.
Talk about the ultimate toolbar... King of toolbars!
Yubnub is a nice search plugin for Firefox, IE, Safari, and other browsers -- it allows very convenient searching of almost any search engine.
Here are examples of how you might use it:
... and so on. It even does fancy stuff like:
It isn't a toolbar, but I've often used it for SEO.
(See "Installing Yubnub" for the browser plugins.)
Hi Rand, wonderful post as usual. I laughed when I got to the final screenshot--my browser looks something like that too. where is it all going to end? I added compete as a result of your write up. I removed Alexa years ago when I was still fairly new to the Web, and I don't think I'll put it back. Firefox is a blast isn't it?
What about "seomoz toolbar"??? I have a few seomoz plug-ins in my firefox bookmarks toolbar... He,he,he. Are you into it yet?
SEOmoz toolbar... it'd be mighty handy premium user tool...
You need a toolbar for all your toolbars! A toolbar toolbar... hehe
I knew it...all I had to do was to come here and start catching up on posts...and any chance of just putting my feet up and watch some TV this weekend is history! LOL
Now seriously: Super lineup Rand. I wasn't aware of a few of them! As I read through it I pictures just what you showed at the end. The hideous display of toolbars. thanks for everybody's input. I got two that I want to have a closer look at. I never cared for Alexa and have been using Firefox but will have a closer look at Web Developer toolbar and Groowe.
Secunia has a "highly critical" security advisory on the Ask toolbar. You can see the details at https://secunia.com/advisories/26960/
" The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the AskJeevesToolBar.SettingsPlugin.1 ActiveX control (askBar.dll)"
I use Google Toolbar, StumbleUpon, Web Developer, SEOquake, and a crazy list of bookmarks stored in folders and countless subfolders.
hi,
i use as many others here the web developer toolbar all the time, because it is a such great tool, for example if you want to check if your pages works without javascript, just click disable/javascript/all and you're done.. or the resize feature to take a look how it works on lower res screens...
a few things i really like about the google toolbar are:
i use these a bunch. are these functions built into any of the other toolbars. i don't remember seeing these in search status.
Rand,
Thanks for posting such a useful list. I am very apprehensive about installing toolbars because they can get very annoying, may be buggy and usually add very limited value. One of the main reasons I stay away from them is the privacy issues.
That's why I found this write up so useful...I would never want to experiment with various toolbars myself! As far as the alexa and compete toolbars, does anyone know if they can be easily turned off - so they don't count visits to competitor websites for example?
I was suprised you didn't mention FireBug (I couldn't survive without this), although its more of a plugin than a toolbar itself.
I also thought you might mention SEO Quake for FireFox. Aside from the usual google/yahoo data its great for showing internal and external links, which are nofollowed etc.
Mike