2016 was quite a year for MozBar…
I’m so pleased to announce that we’ve completely rebuilt the foundation for MozBar, making it more robust and reliable, and we’ve launched a new MozBar Premium feature: On-Page Content Suggestions!
But before we get into the fun, new feature stuff, I want to be completely transparent about some of the challenges we faced early last year:
We're listening and taking it all to heart. Thank you for having our back with your excellent feedback!
So what the heck exactly happened in the first half of 2016?
We had a roadmap of features that we wanted to release in 2016, but soon realized MozBar hadn’t been built to support the growth we had planned for it going forward. We wanted to continue to innovate but it just wasn't scalable.
For the longest time, all MozBar projects were shipped by a small, self-contained team consisting of a product manager (yours truly), a designer, and our contract developer. In May, our rockstar contract developer left to pursue his own projects. We had big dreams for MozBar but now found ourselves without a developer, without a process, and with big scalability issues on the horizon.
In the midst of all this, we found a major vulnerability to our API via MozBar. It was putting too much pressure on our servers and negatively affecting data for our users. To address this, we urgently needed to add in security layers, such as requiring a login and a CAPTCHA. This ended up being a really complicated process. As we attempted to roll out fixes, one new fix seemed to inevitably break something else. It was no fault of anyone person, just a symptom of the mounting technical debt we had accrued. Avid MozBar users quickly noticed the problems we were having. It was making their jobs harder — the antithesis of what MozBar was created for. We could not let this go on.
We knew what we needed to do.
We created a dedicated MozBar team to work all-hands-on-deck to rebuild MozBar from the ground up to make it fast, reliable, and ready to launch a new feature by the end of the year. And I’m happy to say, we did it! We made stabilizing MozBar our number-one priority and were able to build a new backend service that would resolve the data issues that plagued MozBar throughout all of summer 2016. This brand-new foundation would also give us a solid ground to launch innovative new features in a smart, sustainable way. After we stabilized MozBar, our first order of business was to revamp the Page Optimization feature of MozBar Premium (exclusive to Moz Pro customers) and add On-Page Content Suggestions!
How can On-Page Content Suggestions help you?
Content Suggestions helps you easily find ideas for the page you are optimizing to help build your topical authority. These suggestions are topics that are influencing the SERP for the keyword you're optimizing for. Use these content suggestions to beef up any thin content on your page and become the expert on your topic. As a bonus, you can even use content suggestions as a keyword list to help round out keywords you're already researching.
How does it work? We take the top results for the keyword you're optimizing for, extract the most popular topics, then order them by frequency. Sound familiar? This feature also lives in Moz Pro.
The benefit of having this feature in MozBar as well is that you now have the flexibility to analyze any page and keyword combination, not just ones you are tracking in your campaigns. And it's super easy to use! Just enter a keyword you would like to optimize a page for, hit enter, and all of your page optimization factors and on-page content suggestions are surfaced in one view:
Be sure to check out an upcoming MozBar tutorial post from Brian Childs, Moz’s very own product trainer, and sign up for the first-ever MozBar webinar he’ll be hosting next week. Also keep an eye out for Rand’s deep-dive post on how to get the biggest bang for your buck with On-Page Content Suggestions. You will not want to miss these.
I am so incredibly proud of the MozBar team and all of the contributions they’ve made to the toolbar in the past year. We know we still have room to improve and grow; believe me, there’s a long list of things to do. There's also a long list of exciting new features that we have planned for you, too!
And most importantly, we are so appreciative of all of you who’ve stuck with us, have been vocal about issues as they pop up, and worked directly with us to troubleshoot issues that you’ve encountered. If it weren’t for your feedback, support, and patience, we’d be in the dark, so thank you.
I dont use MozBar bcoz sometimes my PC turns frozen, but anyway I do use open site explorer always. To me, it's the best option when I want to analize a web authority.
I'm gonna try to use MozBar again due to open site explorer doesn't show me the social marks.
This was long overdue. Really glad you guys revisited a product that alost EVERY seo uses or has used in the past.
As on onpage guy, im really looking to try it out.
Congrats guys.
I'm going to try it too, I tried to download it but I cannot find the way in Chrome, the update is automatic?
Close Chrome and open it again and it should be in you top bar or extension bar. If its still not working click the M icon / grey icon with a number and blue line underneath it. Should work then.
Have fun :)
That is fantastic to hear! Thank you so much for all of your hard work and transparency--that is why I've been a Moz user for years now. It is always great to know that you (and Moz) believe in truly fixing issues and not sticking a bandaid over the problems. (At the company I work at, it is one of our core values and we call it "F*ck Up, Own Up" and I feel that Moz does a great job of embodying this value as well!)
Thank you again and I look forward to using the MozBar all the time in 2017 and seeing new updates/features added to it in the months to come!
Love the update, Roxana!
Have a question relating to schema: it appears the new toolbar isn't reading json-ld schema markup despite it showing in google's test environment.
We looked through your mozbar documentation and it looks like it's not being pulled; with more and more devs utilizing json-ld for a non-intrusive schema markup do you have plans on adding?
Thanks!
Fred
As one of the first things that brought me to Moz, even during its trying times in 2016, I'm glad to see its not been forgotten; but better yet, expanded.
The push for SEO appears to be working guys. Keep it up!
Great news that the Mozbar is back - it's something I used a lot, especially for quick research purposes until it became too flakey.
Shame it's Chrome only for the moment - although I'm fairly browser agnostic, I find firefox better for running extensions, as it seems that Chrome slows everything down pretty quickly, and having had it as my main browser of choice for years, it's always a pain to switch...
Still, I guess I can put up with it in the meantime to have the Mozbar back...
Yes, I remember the struggle when I couldn't see the number of LRDs and the SPAM score in MozBar. The new version runs fine and I haven't experienced issues with it. Great work!
On the other hand, I noticed that in the On-page Elements report, page title often contains weird elements. For example for this Moz blog page, the MozBar shows this page title:
MozBar Revived! How We Rebuilt MozBar to be More Robust Than Ever—Plus a Brand-New Feature - Moz • icon-book • icon-close • icon-conversation • icon-delta • icon-envelope • icon-external • icon-house • icon-menu • icon-pencil • icon-products • icon-search • moz-logo • Home
It seems like it pulls in other <title> elements from the source code, e.g. <title>icon-book</title>
Hey Roxana,
Glad to hear that MOZ Bar is Rebuilt with brand new features. Like me, all SEO folks were waiting for a long for this upgraded Mozbar. because MOZ Bar has been a great SEO tool ever.
Great news! Thank you for rebuilding and bringing back a stable, useful Mozbar. I also applaud you for acknowledging the problems. I'd stopped using it but have now installed it again and first impressions are very positive. Well done and thank you.
Hello Roxana,
Being in SEO professional and also being a fan of MOz I have been waiting for MozBar, thanks for the re-building it. I just downloaded it and ready for further use.
Great news!
Any plans for Safari version?
Thanks, Peter! We do have this on our roadmap, but we don't have a date for it just yet. We will definitely keep you posted.
Thanks,
Roxana
Thanks for your reply, Roxana. Could you please also comment on Firefox? I have the same question other posters above have with respect Firefox.
Many thanks.
Hi there!
As of now, MozBar is only available on Chrome. We do have a version for Firefox on our roadmap, but don't have a date yet. We will be sure to keep everyone updated as soon as we have any news.
Thanks,
Roxana
Glad a Safari version is on the roadmap! Great to have more options for website testing and all.
This MozBar rebuilt is a relief after all the storm to Moz's products in 2016. Love the Bar but it felt antiquated, buggy, BUT now with a new foundation and dedicated team we can look forward to more features!
Roxana, great to hear about the on-page content suggestions feature! That'll be an indispensable tool for me, as I've often been in the dark trying to figure out what secondary keywords I should be using to support the keyword I'd like to rank for.
I'm using Chrome Version 55.0.2883.87.
I reinstalled Mozbar but it still doesn't work.
Mozbar keeps asking me to login and I have done.
Is that something wrong on my side?
someone has any advice?
Remove-reinstall, clear cache have been done.
The same problem for me... Always asks for new login
sorry but new mozbar dont work good. Show some data from some websites, but another show nothing. what we can do?
please help me
It would be really useful if when looking at the ranking pages for a keyword, it supplies the URL's from a specified version of Google. Would help us guys in the UK out!
Doesn't work at all for me now in chrome whilst logged into Moz, you guys just get worse. Will you be fixing it soon?
Hi Martin,
So sorry for the inconvenience. We found a bug and have been working to resolve it. We are hoping to have this stabilized within the next couple of hours.
Thanks for your patience!
Roxana
MozBar is incredible. For me and for my clients, it's one of the most important pluggin for Chrome. Thank you very much for the explanation, Roxana! Great job!
It will be amazing to work again with MozBar tool but for this, we'll have to work only on chrome until it becomes compatible with other browsers.
Clicking "Log In" on the chrome bar redirects to this article. Tried in incognito and still having logging in issues. Re-installed the extension and yet again problems. Not sure you guys have ironed out all the bugs yet.
Hi Lawrence,
Sorry for the trouble - would you mind shooting me a quick email so we can troubleshoot together? [email protected]
Thanks,
Roxana
Great work guys, this is awesome news! I'm reinstalling now. I had removed it primarily because of speed issues, but I look forward to using again.
Glad to see MozBar was overhauled. I'me excited about the current/new functionality, but it also sounds like there is going to be more improvements to come from you guys which I'm looking forward to!
Hello Roxana,
This is something we all SEO's was looking for. Finally, a tool that helped a lot of us will again boost our efforts. Thanks for this Moz team, would love to use.
Does it work on Firefox yet ?
Hi Greg,
Thanks for your question. I'm sorry, MozBar is not currently available for Firefox, but it is on our roadmap. We don't have a release date set, but we will definitely keep you posted as soon as we have an update.
Thanks!
Roxana
Great news Roxana. Mozbar can be really easy and powerful tool. Will the webinar be recorded?
Regards, Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan!
Yes, the webinar will be recorded. Be sure to sign up for it to get your name on the list. We'll email it to you if you are not able to attend.
Cheers!
Roxana
Great, thank you Roxana. It's already done. ;)
Can you comment on why the MozBar needs to "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit"? That sounds a little scary. Normally I would never install a toolbar that does that.
Hi Shawn!
Thanks for the question. I agree, it does sound a little scary. But I can assure you, it is a fundamental permission for an extension; we've got to be able to read your search results data in order to analyze it/enhance it with our data. Also, I want to note that we never track browser usage data. I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Roxana
For me the mozbar has served me very much, is an excellent tool for what is seo
i am working with moz bar anothar time by this post.
long time ago i work with mozbar, and i leave it
thansk alot
That sounds great and all... but a month after this update and it still doesn't work.
Great Changes in Moz Bar, One of the best thing is that i can find my website spam score directly.
Thank You!
Do we know why it still doesn't work? I've closed Chrome so many times and change the icon to grey and blue again and still doesn't work... I have to be signed in all the time in a different window :(
Hi Roxana,
The Moz Bar looks and works great now. It really feels like a big update and I love using it. Also, props for being so transparent and forward with us, this community really makes you feel like SEO Home.
Cheers :)
I Am New here and i don't know anything about this so please someone help me tell me about this..
Interesting update which will be hugely beneficial to the community.
I have a question:
Do the on-page content suggestions pull from a US centric database? I'm in the UK and a number of the recommendations seem US focused. Is there an option to chose, as you can in Keyword Explorer?
Awesome - Thanks guys.
This is great stuff, Roxanne. Thanks a lot for sharing! I’ve often struggled with keyword combination across different web pages. Will definitely give MozBar a try and get back to you.
Hey Roxana. I was using the toolbar on Firefox when I was having issues with it a few months back and so decided to uninstall it and stop using it. I noticed that this post (and the dedicated MozBar page) talk about downloading it for Chrome, but not Firefox. Is it only available in Chrome? What about the Firefox version? Thanks.
Hi Steve,
Yes, unfortunately we had to remove the Firefox version of MozBar. We know how important it is to our customers and we do have plans to enable it again for Firefox, however we don't have a date set just yet. We will keep you updated as soon as we have any news.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Roxana
Ok - thanks for explaining, Roxana.
I love Moz (been an advocate for years), but I'm disappointed that you simply didn't say this in the post. I'm sure it was the case that it simply got missed out, but it seems like you were trying to hide it, hoping no one would notice or query it (and that old Firefox users - of which there were a few of us, going by the comments - would just go with Chrome instead). Not very TAGFEE IMO.
Hi Steve,
I sincerely apologize for giving the impression that we were trying to hide anything. Not my intention at all. I had written a Q&A post about it previously, but you are right, I should have reiterated it in this post. That was my oversight and I take responsibility for it. I will add an update to this post explaining what happened with Firefox.
Thanks for the feedback,
Roxana