The
Google Toolbar
by Alec Duncan
Like many other useful toolbars out there so is the Google Toolbar. I consider this
toolbar a must have for any serious search engine optimizer and anyone who searches the
internet on a regular basis. Here’s why… The Google Toolbar has grown
significantly in features since inception. It now features several new useful features but
the main focus of this article is on those that aid in search engine optimization. So
without further ado here’s the Google Toolbar unfolded.
PageRank
Upon installation of the full Google toolbar you will notice a small bar near the
center of it that may or may not be partially filled with a green color as displayed in
the diagram below.
This is the Google PageRank indicator. PageRank is one of Google’s ways of rating
your website and plays a role in the position of your site in their search results. This
value is calculated based on several variables including the PageRank value and the number
of sites that link to that page. Sites with a higher page rank tend to have better
rankings than other sites if all other things are kept equal. I have personally
noticed a significant increase in the search engine placement of our Search Engine
Optimization (http://www.lilengine.com) site whenever our Google page rank is increased.
The Google toolbar enable you to, at a glance, view the PageRank of your website as
well as your competitors’ sites. This helps when looking for sites to engage in with
link building as more links coming from sites with a higher PageRank than yours help to
increase your site’s PageRank. It is also said that when looking for site to link to
yours that you should aim for sites with a PR 4 or higher. LilEngine personally accepts
links from any useful and related resources, links from sites with a PageRank of 4 and
above are an added bonus. Contact us for an exchange at info@lilengine.com.
A side note There are times when the Google Toolbar will display your website as having
a PageRank of 0 or even no rank at all. If your site previously had a PR greater than 0
and you notice this, watch it for a while or close your browser and reopen it to check as
there are times that this feature seems to be a bit buggy possibly due to updates etc at
Google.
Cached Version
When Google spiders your site it records the latest version of your site that it has
spidered and this can be viewed using the Google Toolbar by going to the Page Info button
and selecting cached version. Your browser must be on the page you would like to see the
cached version of at the time you choose to do this.
How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of increasing your search engine results in
Google, this will indicate whether or not Google has updated their database with the new
version of your page. If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the cached version of
your site will be updated more frequently than otherwise.
Backward Links
The Google Toolbar also has a pretty useful feature that displays all the web pages
that link to your web page, which Google counts towards your PageRank. This information
isn’t regularly updated and can’t be expected to take between 1 – 3 months
before changes can be seen. Backlinks deal with quality and not quantity. A site with 1000
mediocre backlinks may not have as high a Page Rank as a site with 800 high PR backlinks.
Highlighting
You have the option of adding a highlight feature to your Google Toolbar that
highlights all instances of your search term on the web page reached from your search.
This can help you see how many times your competitors use specific keywords on their pages
and you may modify your SEO campaign accordingly. You may also use this to check your own
pages and see if you are or are not using enough of your target keywords on your page for
optimum search engine placement. Besides those features listed above there are also some
other cool tools on the Google Toolbar such as:
Popup Blocker
This only works in IE 5.5 or later but is a great addition as we all know that there
are many sites on the web that bombard you with popups. Some of these even go as far as
almost preventing you from going anywhere else as more and more windows keep popping up.
Annoyance factor 10/10.
Google Web Search
You can easily search the web using the Google Search Engine via the Google Toolbar by
typing in your search terms in the search box area and then clicking enter or clicking the
‘Search Web’ button on the toolbar.
Translate
Easily translate sites into English that you may be interested in for one reason or
another.
Unfortunately there is no version of the Google Toolbar for browsers other than
Internet Explorer 5.0 and greater but hopefully they will be adding this in the near
future.
There are many more features available with the Google Toolbar. Learn more and download
it here, http://toolbar.google.com/
About the Author
Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com, a Search Engine Optimization resource
site. Visit http://www.LilEngine.com for search
engine optimization tools and strategies. Get our free search engine articles feed and
also get a free Google ranking tool on your site.
To read other articles, visit our archive.
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