Google Toolbar for Firefox - the Tools Your Web Browser Forgot

Google Toolbar for FireFox Reviewed

AutoLink is an interesting tool. If you press the AutoLink button, it will detect information such as addresses VINs, ISBNs and shipment tracking numbers that don't have web links. It will then link addresses to Google Maps, ISBNs to Amazon.com books, and so on. This saves you the trouble of cutting and pasting the information to fill it out later. It comes in particularly handy when looking up addresses.

Read a review of Google Maps.

AutoFill

AutoFill will complete personal information that you may need to fill out repeatedly, such as your name and phone number. You specify the information in Toolbar Options, and it will complete it for you whenever you click on the button. It would be nice if there were more than one profile you could choose from, so you could fill out a work and a home profile, for example.

WordTranslator

WordTranslator translates words from English to another language when you hover over the word. This is of limited use for most users, and can be somewhat annoying, since hovering the mouse anywhere will pop up a new translation box. It would be better if you had to highlight and click or could turn the button on and off more easily.

SpellCheck is a built in spell checker for any online form, and it's a tool that makes the entire Google Toolbar worth the download by itself. Clicking the SpellCheck button highlights possible misspellings in red and suggests alternatives. You can also add new words to the button's spelling dictionary as you encounter them. This button means that you need never misspell words in forum postings, blog entries, online job applications, or any other online form again.

PageRank Display

PageRank is a determining factor for the order Google displays search results. PageRank is determined by the number of other important sites that link to a given site. You can see at a glance how important Google determines a page to be by viewing the PageRank, and you can use this tool to evaluate and improve your own website for search engine optimization (SEO.)

Learn how to use the Google Toolbar to improve your website's ranking with Google.

The Highlight button is another highly useful tool in the Google Toolbar. After you use Google to search, click on the Highlight button, and you keyword(s) will be highlighted, even if you're no longer on a page you found in your search results. This is very useful to quickly find relevant information, and it's also useful to determine your keyword phrase density for search engine optimization.

Word Find Buttons

Rather than highlighting all of your keywords, you can also jump directly to the next instance of a particular keyword. Whenever you search with Google, the Google Toolbar will show the Word Find button for each keyword in your keyword phrase. Click on the button, and you will jump to the next instance of that word on the current web page. You do not have to be on the same web page that you found with the search results.

Google Toolbar will auto update with the newest versions, so your Toolbar will not be out of date with the next browser update and so security patches can be delivered quickly.

Info

The Info menu button is another useful tool for SEO. You can query Google for information about pages that link to a particular page, look at the cached snapshot of the site, find websites that Google considers to be similar, and translate a page into English. It's unclear why translating the page into English is not grouped as either it's own button or part of the WordTranslate button.

Overall

Some of Google Toolbar tools are more useful than others, but the tools you use less can be turned off using the Options button, and the entire Toolbar can be customized to save space for those with small computer screens. The SpellCheck button is so useful by itself, that I'd recommend this Toolbar for anyone using Firefox, and I'd recommend anyone not using Firefox to consider switching browsers.

• Download Google Toolbar from toolbar.google.com.
• Learn to use Toolbar to improve your Web site's Google ranking.