Google has decided to discontinue support for its well-known Google toolbar (an add-on for Firefox). From version 5 and above Firefox will not be compatible with the Google toolbar and there are no plans to add support for any future versions of Mozilla's web browser.
The Google toolbar enabled web-users to highlight search-terms whilst they browsed and view the "Page Rank" of various web-pages. The toolbar may continue to be supported in Internet Explorer for a time, but it'll probably be axed on IE eventually. Many SEO specialists working at an SEO company which relies on metrics from this toolbar may be panicking - but we're not!
If you're looking for an alternative search-toolbar there's always Groowe which has been around since 1996. It combines a number of features implemented within various browser search-bars including the handy "highlight search terms" function on the Google toolbar. Groowe.com adds:
"Groowe Search Toolbar also allows you to browse site's categories or directories and helps you to find wanted category or directory quick and easy"
It's not grade-A English but it's a pretty nifty search toolbar.
New Search Phenomena
Recently a few new search features have become available on the web. Some are fully featured search engines whilst others are niche searching tools designed to add to the experience of web-search overall.
Firstly there's blekko.com:
Blekko is a search engine aiming to eliminate spam, malware and content farms from its results entirely. You can also use advanced slashtags in your searches to perform actions such as ordering the results by date. It's pretty neat so check it out!
StumbleUpon have launched their "Explore Box" into (closed) Beta testing:
You can type in various subjects or areas of interest and the Explore Box will generate some suggestions. How does this differ from Google's auto-complete function? The Explore Box provides searchers with suggestions which correlate to their search terms rather than directly related suggestions.
Additionally the Explore Box has a segmented auto-complete drop-down with a section titled "you might also like" enabling searchers to view broader results. To put it simply, Google is more about the destination whilst Explore Box is more about the "web journey".
A handy little chrome extension...
This is "Tweet Button for Chrome":
It's a little button that sits in your browser-bar enabling you to quickly tweet pages you are currently viewing with a couple of clicks (and some typing). Far more useful however is the fact that the button displays how many times the page you are currently viewing has been tweeted. This can help to give you an idea of how well a page, domain or company is doing on the honest social scales.
You may be deciding whether or not to invest in a link from a website. The page may have a TBPR (toolbar page rank) of 0, but we all know that the toolbar page rank figures are inaccurate at the best of times (and out of date too). Maybe the page is young but in your opinion it still has potential as a valuable link asset. Why not see if it has some tweets? If a page has been tweeted thousands of times it's likely that it may have some link-authority too.
That's all for now! Keep on searching
- The Eazytiger Search Team
- Author
- James Allen
- Title
- SEO Consultant
- Date
- Article added 26th July 2011
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