Suzannah Porter's Bookmarks tagged Firefox →  View Popular

Session restore

Fx 2.0 only: As a blogger and web mail user, it breaks my heart to recount how many times I've composed a long post or email message, then accidentally closed the tab or browser and lost all my work. No more! With Firefox 2, set the browser.startup.page key to 3 to restore your browsing session - with form entries intact! - every time you start your browser or undo close tab after a wayward click. Note: By default, Firefox 2 automatically restores your session if your browser crashes - but this does it every time you restart your browser normally. Thanks for the tip, Arun!

• Key: browser.startup.page


• Modified Value: 3


• Default: 1 (open your specified homepages)

Update: Ryan points out that doing it this way is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. To do it the normal person way, from the Tools menu choose Options, and in the Main area, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" dropdown. D'oh! Thanks Ryan!

Tab width before scrolling kicks in

Fx 2.0 only: The biggest interface changes in Firefox 2 involve tabbed browsing. Power surfers who open more than a dozen tabs will notice that Firefox 2 minimizes tabs to a certain width, then sets the excess to scroll off the tab bar with left and right arrows. As someone who often has more than a dozen tabs open, not being able to see them all made me crazy. One solution is to reduce the minimum tab width so that more tabs fit in the bar before the scroll kicks in. The default is 100 pixels; I found that 75 worked better for me - page titles were still readable, but more tabs could fit. Compare 100 width, which fits 7 tabs across at this size (click to enlarge):

To 75, which fits 10 across at this size (click to enlarge):

To disable tab scrolling entirely, set the value to 0.

• Key: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth


• Modified Value: 75 (fit in more tabs before overflow enables scroll)


• Alternate Modified Value: 0 (disable scroll entirely)


• Default: 100

Fetch only what you click

Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed. Creepy, eh? To stop that madness, set the network.prefetch-next key to false.

• Key: network.prefetch-next


• Modified Value: false

Limit RAM usage

All versions: Goodness knows I've done a good amount of belly-aching about Firefox's voracious appetite for RAM. (It's consistently the most memory-intensive process on both my PC and Mac.) Happily a simple config tweak got Mem Use right back down to a more comfortable number. Along with the previous prefetch mod, set your browser.cache.disk.capacity browser.cache.memory.capacity to a value that fits your total RAM.

• Key: browser.cache.memory.capacity


• Modified Value: Depends on your system's total memory. According to Computerworld:
  
  

  For RAM sizes between 512BM and 1GB, start with 15000. For RAM sizes between 128MB and 512M, try 5000.

  
  

When you Ctrl+K to the Google search box in Firefox, type your terms and hit Enter, the results appear in your current tab - but it's easy to make 'em open a whole new tab so you don't lose your current page. The How-To Geek explains:

Type about:config into the address bar, and then put the following into the filter box: browser.search.openintab. Double-click the value to change it to true.

You can also use Alt-Enter when you search to open a new tab optionally. Want more Firefox about:config magic? Check out our previously-posted top Firefox 2 tweaks. —Gina Trapani

If the page you are viewing has been submitted to Digg, it displays the current number of Diggs the page has. Pressing the button takes you to the submission.

If the page you are viewing has not been submitted, pressing it takes you to Digg’s submission form where you can submit the page to Digg.

Download & Installation Instructions:

• You have to be using Firefox to get this to work. If you have not yet used Firefox go download Firefox, and then come back to this page using Firefox as your web browser.


• Click Here to install the SEO for Firefox extension.


• If the Software Installation window is visible click Install Now.


• If not, then:
  
  
  
  • See if there is a yellow bar near the top of your browser.
  
  
  • Click the Edit Options button on the yellow bar.
  
  
  • Click Allow. Then click OK.
  
  
  • Click Here
  
  
  • Click the Install Now button.
  
  
  
  


• As a final step, restart Firefox.

Search Yahoo! or Google to verify this extension is working for you.

Off the start PageRank is the only thing that is automatically pulled into the SERPs. After you install SEO for Firefox and restart your browser you may want to configure the extension settings to pull in other useful data.

The Theory...

I like to just be able to glance at something and see if it is worth doing or not. Over time in the SEO game you sorta learn a feel for estimating keywords and markets, but it is helpful to have a few additional data points, especially if you are new to the market.

This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.

First Things First:

If you are casually surfing please turn this extension off. Only turn it on if you are actively researching a market.

In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click the SEO for Firefox logo to turn it on or off.

If it is colorful it is on.

If it is gray it is off.

This extension also has courtesy settings which allow you to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. You probably want to set the delay to at least 1 or more seconds. If you set it at 0 do not be surprised if some of the engines at least temporarily block you for scraping data.

SEO for Firefox Extension Features:

Pulls useful market research data right into Google's and Yahoo!'s search results, including the following data near each search result.

• PR: (Google PageRank) an estimated measure of global link authority


• Age: age pulled from Archive.org, shows the first time a page was indexed by Archive.org's spider. The theory is that if Archive.org found a page so did many of the major search engines.


• Links: (Yahoo! linkdomain) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a domain


• .edu Link: (Yahoo! .edu linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a domain


• .edu Page Link: (Yahoo! .edu link ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a specific page


• .gov Link: (Yahoo! .gov linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .gov links pointing at a domain


• Page Links: (Yahoo! link) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a page


• del.icio.us: number of times a URL has been bookmarked on Del.icio.us. Heavily skewed toward techy / Web 2.0 stuff.


• Technorati: an estimate of the total number of links to a site from blogs


• Alexa: rank based on website traffic . Heavily skewed toward internet marketing and webmaster related resources.


• Cached: (Google site:) shows how many pages from a site are indexed in Google


• dmoz: searches the Google Directory to count the total number of pages from a site that are listed in DMOZ, and the total number of pages listed in DMOZ that reference that URL.


• Bloglines: shows you how many people are subscribed to a particular blog via Bloglines.


• dir.yahoo.com: is a site listed in the Yahoo! Directory or not.


• WhoIs: makes it easy to look up the whois data for any site.

One Plug in With More Data, Easier Access :)

In addition to pulling in this valuable marketing data this tool links to the resources where the data was pulled from, so it makes it easy for you to verify the data and further analyze it by citing the source. You can click on any of the data points to dig deeper.

You can chose which of the links you want to appear, and they will appear in the organic search results under each listing, likeso

Our Free Keyword Research Tool :

• Offers rough suggested monthly search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.*


• Links the search volumes to the related global search results.


• Provides links to price estimate tools from Google AdWords. That Google AdWords tool shows the necessary bid to rank #1 for 85% of queries, and roughly how much traffic you could expect AdWords to send you based on that bid price and ad position.


• Links to Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonyms, Yahoo! Suggest, and Keyword Discovery keyword research results.



• Links to various vertical databases like Topix.net, Google Blogsearch, and Del.icio.us to let you know if people are talking about your topic and what types of resources they are referencing.


• Is driven off the Wordtracker keyword suggestion tool. If you sign up for a Wordtracker account they offer many additional keyword research features and tools that are lacking in our basic keyword tool.

Want more free PPC or keyword research tips? Need more Keyword Research Data?

• If you use pay per click marketing you are probably best off using Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter over the smaller PPC engines due to typically higher click quality and faster feedback loops.


• Wordtracker offers a valuable subscription based keyword research service and has a free keyword research guide [PDF]. Wordtracker also sells lists of top search terms at various price points and depth.



• Compete.com offers affordable competitive research reports. Snoop on the competition with Compete Search Analytics. Don't be left out!
  


• Wordze is also recommendation worthy, though I believe it has a slightly steeper learning curve.


• Aaron Wall offers a free Google AdWords & Yahoo! Search Marketing Tips PDF and lists many other free keyword research tools, and includes offers a few free keyword research videos on that page.


• Dan Thies's SEO Research Labs offers professional keyword research services and this free 75 minute keyword research video.

Tool Limitations:

• This current tool is focused on overall search volume. If you want a regional keyword tool try our international keyword research tool.


• Tools can only provide helpful information and estimates. Don't let tools make your mind up for you!
  
  
  
  • Don't expect precise quantitative analysis from keyword tools.
  
  
  • Use tools for qualitative and relative analysis.
  
  
  • People tend to typically use language in similar patterns. If there are 14,000,000 search results for ["car hire"] and only 2,000,000 pages for ["hire car"] then odds are car hire is a more common search term.
  
  
  
  


• Since we estimate Google, Yahoo!, and MSN traffic based on Wordtracker's keyword data, any sampling error is amplified due to the difference in traffic.

* Please note our tool currently assumes Google having ~ 70% of the market, Yahoo! having ~ 20% of the market, and MSN search having ~8% of the market, and is based on rough math that is less precise than Wordtracker's computational techniques.

Depending on your topic / vertical and your geographic location the search engines may have vastly different search volumes. The tool can only possibly offer approximations. Exact search volumes are hard to find due to vanity searches, click bots, rank checkers, and other forms of automated traffic. Exceptionally valuable search terms may show far greater volume than they actually have due to various competitive commercial forces inflating search volumes due to automated search traffic.

Want More Keywords? Buy a Subscription to Wordtracker

Wordtracker has many features lacking in this basic keyword tool. You can subscribe to Wordtracker to get deeper keyword research data for as little as 82 cents a day.

Download & Installation Instructions:

• You have to be using Firefox to get this to work. If you have not yet used Firefox go download Firefox, and then come back to this page using Firefox as your web browser.


• Click Here to install the Firefox Rank Checker extension.


• If the Software Installation window is visible click Install Now.


• If not, then:
  
  
  
  • See if there is a yellow bar near the top of your browser.
  
  
  • Click the Edit Options button on the yellow bar.
  
  
  • Click Allow. Then click OK.
  
  
  • Click Here
  
  
  • Click the Install Now button.
  
  
  
  


• As a final step, restart Firefox.

Click on the words Rank Checker in the bottom of your Firefox browser to activate the tool. Enter a URL and keyword combination and click the start button to check it's rankings.

Off the start this tool is set up to grab data from the Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft SERPs. After you install Firefox Rank Checker and restart your browser you may want to configure the extension settings to automatically collect data periodically and/or pull data from international Google search results.

The Theory...

I like being able to check my rankings real quickly without worrying that some SEO company is aggregating my data and/or spying on me. This tool is open source and hosted your computer - designed with privacy in mind.

Looking at the rankings of a couple of your sites that you know intimately well and tracking how they change over time allows you to

• learn how to read the search results


• appreciate and understand general algorithmic trends


• be one of the first people to know when the relevancy algorithms change in a major way

This tool is designed to be quick and easy to use, but to also give you the opportunity to gain the level of insight needed to compete with other SEOs at the professional level. Here is an image of what the tool looks like:

• If your site is not listed in the top 200 results you will see a - (there are a few of them in the above picture).


• If you have long URLs and/or long keywords some of them may be cut off in the results display. If that happens you can still see the full page names and keywords by scrolling over them.


• You can verify your position in the search results by double clicking on the URL...this will open the associated search results in Firefox.


• If you are logged into your Google account in Firefox this tool will show you personalized ranking results (which tend to make the rankings appear better than they are in many cases). If you want to, you can turn personalized web search off in the Rank Checker options / preference settings window.

First Things First:

In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click on Rank Checker at any time to turn this extension on.

This extension has courtesy settings which allow you to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. You probably want to set the delay to at least 2 or more seconds. If you set it at 0 do not be surprised if some of the engines at least temporarily block you for scraping data. To set the courtesy feature you need to

• click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser


• scroll over the words Rank Checker


• click on the word Options


• at the bottom of the options window you can enter in the Delay between queries: whatever value you feel comfortable with (in seconds)

Uploading Keyword/ Website Data

You can upload keyword and domain name combinations directly in the Rank Checker interface by inserting them one at a time.

Next to the add keyword button is a link for adding multiple keywords. It allows you to upload a keyword list matching a domain.

If you want to quickly create a relevant keyword list just to sample how well your site is doing I recommend using our keyword research tool, or our keyword list generator.

If after using the tool you want to clear out the interface you can simply close the tool, or if you want to use it again you can click the clear button.

Firefox Rank Checker Extension Advanced Features:

This free rank checking tool allows you to check your rankings in Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live search results, and has the following features:

• International: in the options section (mentioned above) you can select to pull results from international versions of Google and/or Google.com.


• Presets: allows you to grab a list of keywords that you can research data on at any given point in time.
  
  
  
  • useful for segregating data for different websites, different categories, etc.
  
  
  • you can save a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
  
  
  • you can open a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
  
  
  
  


• Scheduled Tasks: allows you to look up any of your keyword lists daily, weekly, monthly, or at any periodicity you choose.
  
  
  
  • After you have created a preset list of keywords you can use this feature
  
  
  • To use this feature
    
    
    
    • click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser
    
    
    • scroll over the words Rank Checker
    
    
    • click on the words Scheduled Tasks
    
    
    • at the bottom of the scheduled tasks window you can what keyword lists you want to run and how often to look them up
      

Want to Export Your Data?

With our free rank checker you can easily export your data to a CSV file. At the bottom of the tool window there is an export button for saving a spreadsheet of your rankings, which is convenient for providing a quick ranking report for clients.

These results can be viewed in any spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, or Open Office.

Inside the presets window there is the option to download the history of that keyword list to a CSV file, which shows you how your rankings for keywords change over time

This spreadsheet lists historical data for one keyword at a time

Possible Future Upgrades:

• The tool currently has issues with special international characters. We are working on fixing this ASAP.


• Add proxy support (although this is already baked into Firefox - there is even an extension for switching proxies).


• Will see. Depends on feedback :)


• Leave feedback here.

Other Useful Related Firefox Extensions and Goodies:

There are a number of other browser based extensions display other related SEO information. Advanced users may want to give SEO for Firefox a try. We offer a list of related useful extensions on our SEO extension page.

Have Feedback? Know of Any Conflicting Extensions?

If it does not work then throw your computer out the window, or leave feedback and read comments left by others here.