Having grown up with the internet for most of my memorable life, I’ve seen my share of browsers come and go (and, in some cases, unfortunately not go...) But Chrome is, by far, my favorite.
The best part about Chrome is its customizability. I have 13 different “users” set up on my browser (how’s that for a split personality?), each tied to a different Google account, and each with its own custom set of extensions. I have my core set of extensions that I install on each, but I asked around the SEO team at SEER to see what others people used on a daily basis (shout out to David, Aichlee, Brian, Wil, and Amanda for adding a few!). Here’s the list we came up with:
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Prospecting/ Contact Management
Productivity/ Time Savers
One click extension manager - Allows you to turn extensions off/ on without digging through Chrome’s settings. Lives right next to your browser bar.
Linkclump - Runs in the background. Select how you want to activate the extension (I use right click) and drag a selection box around links on a page. Linkclump will open all of them at once into different tabs. AWESOME time saver.
The Great Suspender - Suspends Chrome tabs’ memory usage to allow you to keep them open without sucking up all your memory
Scraper - Highlight a portion of something on a page, right click, and choose “Scrape similar…”. Scraper will pull everything similar to what you’ve highlighted into a table that you can export straight to Google docs.
Page Monitor - Monitors pages for changes. When a page changes, it will notify you on the icon with a small number and with a pop up notification (which can be disabled if it gets annoying). You can click through from the extension and view the changes that were made (they’ll be highlighted in green).
Copy All URLs - Copy all tab URLs to the clipboard so that you can save them in text, HTML, JSON and custom format.
LastPass - Never struggle or waste time trying to remember your passwords again. Save all your usernames and passwords to this and let it auto-login using one master password that you set.
On-Page Metrics
Web Developer - Adds a web developer toolkit to your browser. I usually use this to disable JavaScript or CSS, to quickly find frames on a page, quickly see meta tags, and to check server response headers.
Canonical - Displays the URL found in the canonical tag on any given page.
MozBar - Allows you to easily view important on-page metrics of a website (PA, DA, links present) as well as its social following. Also pulls in analytics data if you have a Moz analytics account. (And it just got a facelift! Pro tip: ctrl+shift+alt+M shows/ hides it)
Check My Links - Quickly checks links on a page and reports which ones are working and which ones are broken. Great for a quick scan of a page
Page Speed Test - View the load time for the current page you’re on. Also outlines which events happened at which time.
Redirect Path - Automatically displays status codes on the icon. Clicking it will show you the redirect path, HTTP headers (such as server types and caching headers), and the server IP address.
User Agent Switcher - Lets you view sites from different user agent perspectives within your browser (e.g. Chrome vs. Safari vs. IE, iPhone, Googlebot).
Pagespeed Insights - Analyzes the performance of your web pages and provides suggestions to make them faster.
Builtwith Technology Profiler - Shows what technologies are being used on the site. What type of server, CMS, frameworks, widgets etc. are found.
Edit this Cookie - EditThisCookie is a cookie manager. You can add, delete, edit, search, protect and block cookies. Good for clearing cookies quickly for whatever site you are browsing.
Prospecting/ Contact Management
Buzzstream Buzzmarker - Seamlessly add contact information for a site to Buzzstream without leaving the page.
Rapportive - Most people know about this one. Shows your contact’s info in your inbox.
Sellhack - Finds Email addresses for people based on their name and company. Pretty accurate, too.
Analytics Tools
Analytics Helper - Displays a notification in your address bar that tells you what kind of Google Analytics code is present on a page, as well as the UA ID. It will also tell you whether or not the script is in the correct position in the code.
Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google) - Prevents your activity from being tracked in GA. Every SEO should install this on every Chrome profile you have to avoid artificially inflating your clients’ sites’ data!
Tag Assistant (by Google) - Checks the installation of Google tags (e.g. Google Analytics, Adwords Tracking), either on one specific page or across an entire domain.
SiteCatalyst Debugger - Gives you a detailed breakdown of all variables that are collected on your website and sent to the collection servers. Also detects tracking of on page events, file downloads and custom link, shows which data center the information is sent to and informs you if your SiteCat implementation is using old data collection method.
Ghostery - See all of the tracking platforms your client or competitors are using just by loading the page with this plug-in enabled. Detects everything from Google Analytics to Web Trends to Crazy Egg and more.
Random
MeasureIt! - Activates a ruler that will help you get the pixel height and width of something on a page. Not SEO-specific, but helpful nonetheless.
Project Naptha - Allows you to highlight and copy/paste text in images.
Word Count - Shows word and character count for selected text.
Eye Dropper - Allows you to select colors on any web page and displays the hex code.
Diigo - Great way to record your favorites.
Pocket - The ultimate tool to keep you focused, instead of reading articles that pass my desk, I pocket them.
Controlled Multi-Tab Browsing - Keeps me focused; good reminder that I have too much open.
RSS Finder - Tells you if a page has RSS.
Calculate Some Percentages - Quick and simple way to calculate percent changes. (Made by SEER’s own Nico Miceli!)
Use any that you don’t see on here? Tell me about them in the comments!
