11 FireFox Extensions to Search Google Properly

June 23rd, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 10 Comments

Google has managed to build an awesome search engine to my mind: it has a simple user-friendly interface and returns the most relevant results.

However naturally, Google just can’t satisfy everyone’s needs.

The following FireFox Extensions will help you to adapt Google’s interface and results to what you need, in the most efficient manner possible, making Google even better.

Turn off Google personalized search with Joost’s search plugin (works for both FireFox and Internet Explorer). If you search Google to check your rankings for example, you most probably want Google to show you most impersonal results independent of your search history and preferences:

Search Google without Wikipedia - another FireFox search plugin by Distilled that removes wiki results from Google SERPs (for all of us who are sick and tired of seeing wiki results on top no matter what we search for).
Show numbers for Google SERPs: Number Google Results is a FireFox plugin that requires Greasemonkey installed.
Enhance Google results page with useful information for each result: Google PR, backlinks, age, etc: SEOQuake or SEO for FireFox.
Google Global allows to view both organic and paid results for 5 different countries (USA, Canada, Ireland, UK and Australia).

Google Global

Google Advanced Search FireFox Toolbar allows for a quick access to some Google advanced operators (I wish they had “date” operator included).
GooglePreview is a FireFox add-on that shows page preview within Google results (for those of us who like visual search a lot).
SocialPhile - to access Digg rankings within search results.
SearchRadar integrates related phrases to the search results; besides, it provides a short context for each term once you hover over.
GoogleHotKeys - to navigate through Google results with hot keys: ‘Return’/'N’ to navigate through pages, ‘Up’/'Down’ to navigate through results and ‘P’ for a page preview.
SearchBoth shows Google and Yahoo results side by side.

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Comments

10 responses so far ↓

Mark O'Neill on Jun 23, 2008 at 8:21 am

Number 10 - the hotkeys one - is not compatible with Firefox 3. Do you know of a similar extension that IS compatible with Firefox 3?
Tom on Jun 23, 2008 at 8:34 am

Thanks for including us in the list Ann :-)

My personal favourite is google global - I use it SO much
Dave Davis on Jun 23, 2008 at 10:06 am

Thanks a million Ann for the mention. And thanks Tom too… your feedback alone caused the release of 2.0 :)

We are working on a completely search-unrelated extension at the moment, when that’s complete, work on the next version will begin. (Yahoo and MSN support).
Basil Hashem on Jun 23, 2008 at 11:11 am

Another pretty useful add-on is CustomizeGoogle (http://www.customizegoogle.com/)
SEO Canada on Jun 23, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Great post Ann your missing one though :) Joost has another one for Link Analysis that shows you what all the anchor text being used for a particular site is under the Yahoo Site Explorer. Cheers.

http://yoast.com/seo-link-analysis-firefox-extension/
Loren Baker, Editor on Jun 23, 2008 at 7:04 pm

Thanks for the tip SEO Canada, but this is a post about extensions for searching on Google, not checking backlinks on Yahoo.
SEO Canada on Jun 23, 2008 at 8:55 pm

Well technically I use the link button in SEOQuake from a Google Search so it definitely relates to Google searching in my eyes ;)
Mike on Jun 23, 2008 at 9:59 pm

Great list Ann. Google Global is such a time saver!
Software Testing on Jun 24, 2008 at 6:42 am

@ Ann,

Can you please do a posting by compiling the list of SEO tools, categorized.
Mark Cramer on Jun 24, 2008 at 2:52 pm

If you wouldn’t mind, please take a look at Surf Canyon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6549. The application personalizes the results in real-time, enabling people to find relevant information when it’s buried. We’d love to hear your feedback. Thanks!