This is shocking, to say the least. It used to be the case that it was the web pros, the tech guys and their friends who sang the praises of toolbars for browsing and now it seems that everyone and their dog is getting in on the action. Outrageous! There is no excuse at all.
Unlike other search innovations, using browser assisting technology - toolbars and, for FireFox and, more recently, Internet Explorer extensions - is incredibly easy to do and enhances your search experience tenfold. The good old Google toolbar has become a firm favourite with the greatest range of users, but what people are really talking about these days is the Google toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox browser - specifically Google's heavy promotion of the technology and, by extension, of the browser itself: Mozilla Firefox.
Mozilla Firefox, for those that think it sounds very much like a character from some super hero comic, is a new and improved user agent - or web browser, to you and me - which has been putting Internet Explorer to shame to such an extent that Microsoft chiefs have publicly accepted their liability in allowing the open-source Mozilla foundation offering to get a foothold in the otherwise dominated browser marketplace. Aside from the revolution of 'Tabbed browsing' instigated by FireFox, part of the technology's appeal lies in the sheer number of uses web users and web professionals are concocting and developing for each and every one of us to use: all for free. Yep, free as in lunch.
You can personalise FireFox in myriad ways. Say you are into social search, you can chose to add on Del.icio.us extensions for easy tagging and searching, or download the 'StumbleUpon' toolbar which, at the time of going to press, is the 4th most popular FireFox extension, downloaded by 131,605 people. The functionality of StumbleUpon allows user filtering to be applied to a database of pages - also supplied by users 'Tagging' the pages - and then randomly serving a page to your browser with every click. Other extension highlights include my personal favourite, the 'SessionSaver' extension which, like magic, recovers browser tabs should you accidentally close Firefox, or should it crash on you - sheer genius.
What we at bigmouthmedia are really interested in, however, are the applications for search which, I can tell you are endless. The monitoring of user behaviour on site by the Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Windows Live toolbars are an important factor in the weight given to sites when deciding if they should be returned for a search query and, if so, how high.
The final word? Download the toolbars - make it a priority - and get used to using them, you'll be surprised at just how much more there is to search than algorithms.
