There’s no comparison. Google’s Chrome browser is by far my first choice out of any browser out right now. I was a fan of Firefox for a long time but when it started getting laggy, I was forced to make the switch during the early days of Chrome. When it launched there were only a handful of extensions but thankfully things have changed and Chromes’ plugins rival even the best of Firefox’s. Here are 7 of my favorite extensions that I find extremely helpful and use every day. Enjoy!
SitezMeter
SitezMeter is a lifesaver when it comes to checking out sites. It saves space from having to use an entire toolbar and it checks the three main search rankings: Alexa Traffic Rank, Google Page Rank and Compete Rank. Using this, you can quickly check the traffic for any site without having to navigate off the site or open a new tab.
Rapportive
Rapportive is probably my favorite new tool. It’s the ultimate companion to your contact management system. Rapportive is an add-on to Gmail and shows all the recent activity of whoever your emailing: Linkedin profile picture and title, latest tweets, latest Facebook updates, recent conversations and every other website they choose to list. It takes all the work out of doing the research before you contact a prospect or client.
Hootsuite Hootlet
The Hootsuite Hootlet is a simple plugin that also saves a ton of time if you use Hootsuite (like I do) to manage all of your social accounts. The plugin allows you to share whatever page, website or blog post your currently on with any of your social networks. The thing I love about it is that it automatically shortens the URL and tracks it.
Google Similar Pages
The Google Similar Pages plugin works as a great discovery tool. If you are visiting a website for the first time and want to put it into context, see who a few of its competitors are or want similar information that it provides all you need to do is click the plugin and it will automatically display the four most closely related sites to the website.
Clip To Evernote
If you aren’t using Evernote to organize your bookmarks and information, it’s time to start! Clip To Evernote is a plugin for the website that makes it easy to either take a snipit of text from a site and save it, take an entire page or copy the URL. It saves you a step or two from not having to go into Evernote and the the process manually.
WhoWorks.At
WhoWorks.At is a tool that is actually a companion to Linkedin and is great if you are researching people who work at a company or trying to find a connection. Whatever company website you are visiting, simply click the plugin button and it will display all the employees in your Linkedin network who work at that company. From there you can see how you are connected to them or just check out their Linkedin profile.
Screen Capture (By Google)
I’ve tried several different screen capture tools and ultimately settled on this one. Google Screen Capture is a super easy plugin to use and has all the functionality you need while staying very simple. It allows you to capture the entire web page, only the visible part of the page or a region of the page you choose. From there you can blur out parts of the page, use any color arrow to point to something or use a circle (below) to call attention to an element on the page. Then it saves it in an image format directly to your desktop. This is extremely useful for screenshots in presentations or instructions.
Am I missing any plugins? Which plugins do you use or find helpful?
