Google Chrome Plugins for SEO
Google Chrome is a great web browser in many respects. However, if you’re used to using Firefox, and having a variety of tools accessible through various plugins, it can be a shock to move to such an austere browser.
Although forthcoming versions of Chrome may have the ability to add plugins, we thought it would be useful to have the basic suite of SEO tools available right now, and have recreated many useful functions using Javascript bookmarklets.
Current Version: V1, released 13th July 2009
Update, 14th July: There is now also a Spanish Version, thanks to Chicaseo.
This is a work in progress. If there are other useful features you would like us to include or find any bugs, let me know. (rob@distilled.co.uk)
Installation
- To begin, save this bookmarks file to your computer. (Right click the link and select ‘Save link as‘)
- From Chrome, show the bookmark toolbar by pressing Control + B, then right click it and select Bookmark Manager
- From within the bookmark manager, select Tools > Import bookmarks… and then select the saved bookmark file
- The ‘SEO Buttons’ folder will appear within an ‘Imported’ folder; drag the SEO Buttons folder to just underneath the root ‘Bookmarks bar folder’ (or, if you have no other bookmarks, directly onto the ‘Bookmarks Bar’ folder.) You can now close the Bookmark Manager.
Using the SEO Buttons
Clicking on the newly created SEO Buttons folder will give you access to the following tools:
- Count Links: displays the number of links on the current page (showing internal and external)
- NoFollow Highlighter: adds a light red background to any NoFollow-ed links on the current page
- Google Site: search: shows all indexed pages from this site
- Google’s Cached Version: shows the cached version of the current page
- Google PageRank: pops up a window showing the current page’s PageRank (thanks to Techie Buzz)
- SEO Playground Tool: opens a useful information pane by Dave Naylor
- Y! Link Report for this Page: shows the Yahoo! SiteExplorer links for the current page
- Y! Link Report for this Subdomain: as above, but for the whole site
- WolframAlpha stats about this Page: may show some useful info about the current page
- Twitter Mentions of this Site: uses BackTweets to show recent mentions of the site on Twitter
- Blog Mentions of this Site: uses SocialMention to show recent mentions of the site on blogs
- Other Sites at this IP: data from My IP Neighbors
- Edit Page Text: allows you to edit the text on any page
- SEOMoz Pro Tools: this folder allows easy access to useful tools for SEOMoz’s Pro Members
- About SEO Buttons: links to this post; come back from time to time to check for updates.
Updates
We’ll add any updates to this page, so do let us have your bug reports or other comments.
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Tom Critchlow on Mon (13 Jul) @ 1:19 pm
I love this – Chrome is so much quicker than firefox (for me anyway, possibly due to all the plugins I have) so this makes doing quick SEO reviews much easier.
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stuartpturner on Mon (13 Jul) @ 1:44 pm
May this be the first step on my migration from Firefox! I have the same problems as Tom, coupled with fact that if you leave FF running for any length of time it eats all your free CPU until you freeze in a horrible whiteout and have to restart it.
I used to love you Firefox but you cut me up inside with your sluggish behaviour – plug ins are all I need to make Chrome my sexy new browsing mistress.
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richardbaxterseo on Mon (13 Jul) @ 2:09 pm
One of the most useful SEO blog posts I’ve read for ages. Nice work Rob!
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Matthew Oxley on Mon (13 Jul) @ 2:24 pm
Excellent work.
Although I really tend to use the 2 browsers for different things (FF having tons of toolbars & extensions, Chrome having absolutly nothing and used for ‘general’ browsing) I do welcome something light to make Chrome workable.
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David Mihm on Mon (13 Jul) @ 2:55 pm
Great stuff. There is something about using “The Man’s” browser that is deeply off-putting but until Firefox can even come CLOSE on speed it is crucial for productivity. I will reluctantly download these buttons
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Seo Rohit on Mon (13 Jul) @ 3:00 pm
Hey! Rob,
I am agree it is good? my favorite tools are SeoQuake and page rank is available on Chrome.
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stuartpturner on Mon (13 Jul) @ 3:15 pm
@David You know you love The Man really,with his superfast browsers and soon to be released OS – he can watch what you do all the time…
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Morepro-seo on Mon (13 Jul) @ 3:49 pm
Have been waiting for some good tools to use in Chrome – thx for explaining in such detail (for install n00bs).
Btw… Does anyone else have huge delays in using JavaScript bookmarks in Chrome? Waiting 90+ seconds in some cases, just to pull a page’s PR.
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Rob on Mon (13 Jul) @ 4:01 pm
Thanks for the comments, hope you’re finding it useful.
@Morepro-seo: I’m not seeing delays in running any of these bookmarks. The Pagerank pop up is provided by TechieBuzz, so if there is a delay once the popup window has opened, it may be that their server is being slow. If it takes a long time for the window to appear, your PC may be low on resources.
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Morepro-seo on Mon (13 Jul) @ 4:23 pm
@Rob Thanks for the reply. We’ll give these a shot – hopefully they are immune to the problems we’ve been seeing
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Herramientas de SEO para Google Chrome en español - Chica SEO - Ideas de Negocios y SEO on Mon (13 Jul) @ 9:08 pm
[...] Herramienta traducida de: Google Chrome Plugins for SEO. [...]
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SEO Plugins für Google Chrome - Grundlagen Computer on Tue (14 Jul) @ 6:47 am
[...] Bookmarks schnell checken kann. Nun habe ich via @seounited einen interessanten Beitrag von Rob (distilled.co.uk) gefunden bei dem er SEO Plugins für Google Chrome [...]
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Google Chrome Plugins for SEO | Distilled blog | ASulumitsRetsambew.Com RSS Blog on Tue (14 Jul) @ 10:17 am
[...] post: Google Chrome Plugins for SEO | Distilled blog Comments [...]
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Guru on Tue (14 Jul) @ 10:55 am
Gr8 work! hats off to you.. now I can proudly say that I use Chrome
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Dustin on Tue (14 Jul) @ 4:14 pm
Haha YES!!!!! I hate Firefox and have for a really long time, it’s too much of a resource hog, so this is perfect. Keep up the good work, and thanks Tom_C over at SEOmoz for pointing me over to this post.
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blpgirl on Tue (14 Jul) @ 5:24 pm
Hey Rob!!!
Thanks for the link and the reply.
Couldn´t help to translate it since you did such an amazing job, just love it
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marshall on Tue (14 Jul) @ 7:07 pm
Fantastic! A set of SEO plugins is what I’ve been waiting for to really start using Chrome as my default browser! Thanks!
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Useful SEO Bookmarks For Google Chrome on Wed (15 Jul) @ 2:50 pm
[...] Distilled blog has come up with a list of interesting and useful bookmarks related to SEO for Google Chrome, that will help you perform several tasks like check page rank [...]
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Shane on Wed (15 Jul) @ 7:09 pm
Very impressive set of tools. I Have not used Chrome much yet but this may make me switch. Thanks!
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Keith on Wed (15 Jul) @ 7:13 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love chrome, it’s speed and mostly it’s simpicity. I also love the tear off tabs since I use multiple monitors. But what I’ve really missed is the plugins I have in firefox. This looks like a great start to making the move fully over.
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Brian Hancock on Wed (15 Jul) @ 7:34 pm
Great post, but I still wish Chrome would support some kind of toolbars. I can’t fully migrate to Chrome until I can use SEO Quake… =/
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Robb Luther on Thu (16 Jul) @ 1:52 am
This might be premature because I have installed without trying them out yet… but AWESOME! I have been hoping to get some useful seo tools for chrome.
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Steve on Thu (16 Jul) @ 4:20 pm
Hi,
good to see you posted about seo plugins for chrome, but was wondering have you take some bits of it from this thread:
http://www.chromeplugins.org/google/chrome-tips-tricks/google-toolbar-chrome-50.html
It was published like 9 months ago.. If you took some reference from there please add a credit link to your post.
Regards
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David on Fri (24 Jul) @ 2:02 pm
Interesting, i would have to say im being stubborn on this issue and staying with Firefox. As @Tom pointed out you could speed up Firefox by removing/disabling the dozens of plugins you may have running…
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Rob on Thu (30 Jul) @ 5:32 pm
@Steve – that’s a good post; most of them look more like they improve the browsing experience that specifically help SEO, but I’ll take a look and see if there’s anything I can integrate into a future release.
@David – for quite a while I’ve kept both browsers open, so that I can use Chrome for the blazing fast browsing, and then flip back to Firefox for some of the plug-in features. Give Chrome a try for day-to-day internet browsing, maybe you’ll be as pleased as I (and a bunch of those guys ^^) have been!
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Music Production on Sun (2 Aug) @ 9:38 am
FINALLY!!
One good piece of practical SEO Advice.
I already have the “SEOpen” Plugin but that on Firefox. But I must admit, it does feel somewhat outdated. So I am going to give Chrome and these new SEO Plugins a try. Let’s just hope it also works under Linux. Never played with Chrome before.
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Corporate Graphics on Mon (3 Aug) @ 8:43 pm
Thats cool – I’ve been using Firebug on and off for FireFox (well worth checking out) – I hope Chrome has something similar soon =)
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Samuel on Thu (6 Aug) @ 7:24 am
thank you for such a nice post which directs us to the best of best manner to use this great browser..
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machoman on Sun (9 Aug) @ 7:14 am
thank you! I really liked this post!
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20MileDesign on Thu (19 Nov) @ 7:25 pm
Well I am going to give this a go,
I have been a Firefox user for many years but I am liking this speed you speak of so I want to see it with my very own eyes if it is as good as one says.
I also love the amount of bookmarks (tempted me to give this ago) you have given us, to make the process extremely easy.
Cheers for some great information
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Carter Cole on Mon (22 Feb) @ 5:32 am
i wrote a chrome plugin that brings alot of this data all into one place.. id love your thoughts on it… i just released it
http://j.mp/installSEO