SEO Tip #73: Which Chrome Extensions Are Popular at Google?

Matt Cutts: Oh my goodness this is such a good question! I feel bad because I have just installed a new version of Ubuntu and I completely reinstalled and I wiped away all my Chrome extensions. Otherwise, I’d give you this big long list. So, I’ll just name a few off the top of my head and then I’ll give you a tip to find some good Chrome extensions for yourself.

Probably the very first Chrome extension I always install is the Goo.gl URL Shortener. And so if you search for Chrome URL Shortener it’s like the number one result. It looks like a little thing where you tighten like this and it compresses things. So it’s wonderful.

It just takes the URL and shorten it with Goo.gl and then it’ll load that up into Twitter if you want. Then you can just tweet about anything that you want. I use it all the time. It’s how I shorten URLs because I like to use Goo.gl.

Another great extension, and to disclose it was written by an engineer on my team by the name of Tiffany Lane, is Favorite Doodle. And Favorite Doodle essentially lets you pick your favorite Google Doodle. Instead of having just the regular Google picture, you could have a Mondrian Google or the Google with lasers, whichever Google, the Brail Google; everybody has a favorite Google logo.

The nice thing is its smart enough to say, “If there’s a holiday logo show the holiday logo.” But if it’s just the sort of bland, vanilla, normal every day Google log, use your favorite Google doodle instead.

There are a lot of other great extensions. There’s one called Google Similar Pages, which is kind of like the related link on Google, but as you’re surfing around the web, suppose you’re interested in bikes, you land on trek, you might click on this and it will show you other bike manufacturers or other pages that are really handy like forums about bikes and things like that.

The tip that I will give you is just recently, the Chrome Extension Gallery, which you can find if you search for it on Google, introduced six different topics. These are, web development, blogging, shopping, sports, fun, and by Google.

These are fantastic because under web development you might find the speed tracer extension, which will show you exactly what’s slowing down a particular webpage whenever you try to load it. There’s all sorts of great stuff like Aviary Screen Capture will let you take a screen shot of whatever you see in your browser.

It’s a lot of fun. I’m probably going to end up with another eight or nine extensions even though I only reinstalled a day or two ago. But there’s a lot of fantastic stuff. I highly encourage you to check out Chrome Extension Gallergy where you can find all sorts of great stuff form Google voice plug-ins to shopping stuff to puppies and kittens. Like there are bookmarklets that will sort of say, “take the picture on the page and turn it into kittens.”

So there’s a whole lot of great stuff out there. I encourage you to explore it.

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About the Author

Andy Johnson

Andy Johnson has been on the Internet since the its dawn(ie his first computer program was recorded on cassette tape) and his first hard drive cost about as much his current MacBook. His first byline was in 1993 for a local newspaper rag he eventually helmed, and his last “real job” was at a computer start up which ended when it ended. Throughout it all he’s freelanced and blogged. Now he is mesmerized by Search Engine Optimization forever trying to “rise to the top” for the right reasons. He’s been married to his wife Julia for as long as he can remember and has two lovely, wonderful children. He looks forward to sharing the latest in the technical best for all the online entrepreneurs.