Being a chrome junkie and also a keen productivity evangelist I'm predictably a huge fan of javascript bookmarktels. I use them all day long and over time I've built up a few that I have made myself that I thought I'd share today.
What is a javascript bookmarklet?
A javascript bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that you can execute in your browser by bookmarking a link. I'm shamelessly going to steal Rand's image from his old post on bookmarklets:
The Basics - Cached Pages & Site Searches
What I'm covering in this blog post are all kinds of weird and wonderful bookmarklets but I want to re-post the basics here for you since these two bookmarklets I literally use 10s of times a day:
- Quickly run a Google site: search for the site you're on - Site Search
- Jump to the Google cache version of the URL you're on - Google Cache
Rand actually wrote a post that covers a lot of the standard bookmarklets (including the two above) and if you're new to them I strongly suggest you check it out: 30 SEO bookmarklets to save you time
Open Site Explorer Bookmarklets
Of course you can use the moz toolbar to quickly grab stats and jump to your favorite tools but sometimes I prefer the speed and elegance of a bookmarklet instead so here's a bunch of them that work with the new open site explorer URLs:
- Open Site Explorer Links
- Open Site Explorer Top Pages
- Open Site Explorer Anchor Text
(By the way, while I'm mentioning OSE - you do know that CSV downloads are back right? Woop! Good job moz team!)
Domain Insights
These bookmarklets are designed to give you some insights about the domain you're browsing.
- Domain name search volume:
- Google Adplanner:
- SEMrush
- MajesticSEO:
Social Data
I've talked about my love of Topsy on here before and it will be no big surprise that I have a Topsy bookmarklet:
This gives you quick access to an OSE-style view of the most tweeted pages on a domain:
I've also talked about sharedcount before and it's no surprise I have one for them too:
Google Analytics Debugging
I spend an unhealthy amount of time in Google Analytics and often end up needing to debug how a site is using GA and what's going on with a particular issue. Both of these bookmarklets come in handy for this:
- Check the cookie of the site you're on:
- Check the referrer for the page you're on:
Technical SEO Stuff
Here's a few more technical SEO bookmarklets for some common functions that I find myself using over and over again:
- Check if the page you're on has a canonical tag and alert you to it:
- Check if the page you're on has a meta robots tag and alert you to it:
Thanks to Berian Reed I also discovered these awesome bookmarklets:
SERPs Damn It
This is an awesome bookmarklet that you run on a SERPs page and it will open a new tab with all of the rankings displayed in an easy to copy and paste manner which is perfect if you're looking to quickly gather some data to throw in excel or an email or whatever:
Go check out the bookmarklet and explanatory video here.
HTTP Header Checkers
Webconfs has a nice header checker that has a bookmarklet associated with it. Here's the bookmarklet and here's the tool.
If you'd prefer a bookmarklet that stays in the window - check out this bookmarklet from yoast which gives you something like this:
Fun Social Stuff
We're entering an age of connected data and I stumbled across the Google social graph API a little while back and instantly fell in love. Using this tool you can quickly and easily see what pages Google has crawled and associated with a particular page. This is best demonstrated visually - if I put my twitter URL into the tool Google tells me that I'm related to these pages:
When you're doing twitter research and trying to find out who someone is or find out how you might be able to get in touch with someone it's often handy to quickly lookup a twitter handle here and see where else that person lives online so I built a bookmarklet that jumps straight to the google social graph page from a twitter page:
- Run this on a twitter profile page and find out what they're connected to (note I have this setup for https pages as I always use https pages on twitter, you might need to do some hacking if you have some other setup)
Bonus Stuff
A lot of people I know swear by Quix which is supposed to be like bookmarklets on steroids. Personally I've never quite gotten my head around it (despite all the keyboard shortcut goodness) but I feel like I'm likely in the minority - if you're a power user be sure to check it out!
While creating and testing bookmarklets I found this JS prettifier extremely useful.
Let's Hear It For The Community!
I'd love to see what the community has built - what bookmarklets have you pimped your browser out with? Leave your best in the comments!
One I find super useful when I'm doing linkbuilding is the Buzzmarker from Buzzstream. Here's the bookmarklet.
Some more:
Bing Indexed Pages
Do a Google Search then click this bookmarklet to see articles from the past 7 days.
Do a Google Search then click this bookmarklet to see articles from the past 24 hours.
Here's a domain-to-IP lookup
Boom!
Great tips. If anyone prefers a keyboard over the mouse, here is how remove 1 step from this flow (compared with search and then click the bookmarklet).
A quick example using dohertyjf's parameters for google searches for the past 7 days:
The crux of this technique is replacing the 'search query' for the particular search engine with %s
Since you have already got the url parameter for the last 24hours, it would be pretty easy to make that bookmark too :-)
For the curious, you can also use the %s multiple times to repeat your search query e.g. finding related content: https://www.google.com/search?q=~%s+-%s
You can basically mix up any of the search operators and URL parameters to get just what you want :-)
This is an awesome post - though of course you missed my personal favourite - https://erkie.github.com/ turn any page into asteroids, oddly enough it is surprising how much better it looks half way through!
There is a huge number of booklets that is missing, test with GtMetricx is another favourite, but I love the ability to pull this into some of my favourite tools! A definite thumbs up, though some of the original bookmarklets are now out of date, so a refresh of that page would be great too.
Wow - that asteroids bookmarklet is insane!
Which of the original bookmarklets are out of date? I'd be happy to update any of them. When I checked most of them still seemed valid?
The asteroids bookmark was very cool!
Javascript bookmarklets are super handy, and this is a great list!
I have been working on a custom one for myself to use to get a quick idea of on-page SEO factors. It's a labour of love, and constant work-in-progress, but has already saved me a ton of time.
Would love for you to share if at all possible - maybe a youmoz post? :)
Definitely! As soon as I get it polished, that is :D
Love that post, you can't have enough bookmarklets. I'm using the Chrome extension Spellbook to have all my bookmarklets available on right-click.
Good post. Bookmarklets are a good way to speed up things. I like being able to use the least amount of software / services and bookmarklets let me do this a bit easier.
Not a whole lot of ground left to cover here! But i have one:
For anyone looking around the web for landing page inspiration, can have a look at most any page's wireframe with Wirify bookmarklet.
thanks Minchala! Wirify was very helpful, will have to send u a link :-)
I hate this kind of comment, but sometimes there's nothing more to say than: Lovely & Useful post.
Thanks Tom!
"Lovely" is the UK version of an Americanized, THIS ROCKS! Agree!
;) Cheers in the UK!
Speeding things up a bit, nice, love quix by the way, and will have to check out serps right away.
Thanks for the list
Great post! Nifty indeed!
I like the SERPs Redux (SERPs Damn It) but its not working for me!? If i click the link on a google search result page nothing happens... i use it on google.de
Thanks for pointing out these bookmarks Tom! I found out that SERPs Damn It was especially useful! :)
P.S. Haven't been on SEOmoz blog for a while, and just noticed... where are your glasses lol ;)
Interesting stuff.
Thanks for showing the power of Bookmarklets. After exploring Rands old articleI would love a command to instantly save links to my delicious account (I currently use standard menu buttons)Hell why not even add a bookmarklet to Google +1 -- I realized "social bookmarking" was left out, but it is valid for SEO and spreading the news faster.But then I discovered thru Rands old article Quix.
(Joost's wonderful tool quixapp.com for organizing Bookmarklets elegantly)
Would it be possible for both Tom & twkm (When your list is done) to provide a text version (aka quix.txt) Quix Syntax of these useful bookmarklets. I know my browser is already crowded with too many tools.
Thanks for sharing the great tips.
Searchengineman
text file
Quix works by using shortcuts: https://www.dennissievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Quix-Cheat-Sheet.pdf
If you want to make these bookmarks/bookmarklets work using keyboard shortcuts here is the lowdown:
There are a couple of these that are going to reaalllllyyyy speed up my SEO proposal/quote process. Thakns, Tom!
I have created a quick SEO check bookmarklet, it checks the current pages: title, description, analytics, h1, h2, h3, h4, images and alt attributes...
https://riseofweb.com/quick-seo-check-with-a-bookmark-and-javascript-code/
Love this post, a little dated now but still a great resource. If anyone else found the social count checker bookmarklet from sharedcount not working, here is a pastebin of updated and working code : https://pastebin.com/1z6k009u
Great post, too bad it is Asteroids now.
I'm not quite understand, yet. Maybe because my English is not good. But thank you for sharing this. Really enriched my knowledge.
Tip: I concatenated " guest post" to the end of the site: search bookmarklet as a quick way to check if a blog you're browsing has taken guest posts in the past. You could also create versions for the other usual guest posting searches such as "guest blog" and "write for us" etc.
BTW - for posterity I thought I'd add that I updated the canonical/robots one into one bookmark:
javascript: (function () { var url = document.location; var links = document.getElementsByTagName('link'); var metas = document.getElementsByTagName('meta'); var canonical = 'none'; var robots = 'none'; for (var i = 0, l; l = links[i]; i++) { if (l.getAttribute('rel') == 'canonical') { canonical = l.getAttribute('href'); break; } } for (var i = 0, l; l = metas[i]; i++) { if (l.getAttribute('name') == 'robots') { robots = l.getAttribute('content'); break; } } if (canonical == 'none') { alert('Canonical tag: ' + canonical + '\nRobots Meta: ' + robots); } else { var popup = confirm('Canonical tag: ' + canonical + '\nRobots Meta: ' + robots + '\n\nGO TO CANONICAL??'); if (popup === true) { location.href=canonical; } } })();
It also asks you if you'd like to jump to the canonical URL and loads the page in the browser. Thought it might be useful for some people. I find myself using it a lot.
Good Article. I agree that it's a great way to speed things up a little. Time is all we have.
Im for anything that saves time...Thanlks for the tips
Yeah..you are absolutely right..time is very important for all of us..so speed up of work is a good technique and very useful thing...
I agree on you. These are all insightful ideas that you have in doing the blog comments. maybe I could help you reach out to a wider audience.
Great roundup of Rand bookmarklet post back in 2010!!
Kind of precious little diamond!
good hints!
Agreed. Thanks for the great SEO tips
<link removed>
the http headers tool is very useful for an seo.
it has helped me solve many problems!
Is there a way to open up the bookmarklets in a new tab?
I'm a bit late here, but I can just Ctrl + Click in Google Chrome.
I rewrote Tom's bookmarklets for OpenSiteExplorer in order to make them load in a new tab. You can find them here:
https://www.hoodwebmanagement.com/code/open-site-explorer-bookmarklet-seomoz/
Please let me know if you have any trouble with them.
Very useful bookmarklets!
Time is money afterall
Great list of bookmarks. This should help me save some time on a daily basis! Thanks for sharing.
Some excellent productivity-increasing tools here. I always enjoy your handy shortcut posts, Tom, especially your Google Docs posts and this one!
I now have seven of your bookmarklets on my toolbar. Thanks much!
thanks for the list. speed is power! :-)
That is a very exciting ideas and thoughts about your writing but I would suggest you to create a difference.
Great post, thanks for sharing! This will totally speed me up and thank you dohertyjf for the additonal bookmarklets.
An awesome set of time savers, (including Rand's original post). Just passing this around the Koozai team now.
Your SEO ideas has been so very innovative on my end, maybe I can learn more from you if you will expound the ideas profoundly.