Let’s be honest, we all use Google’s search function many a times, daily. Whether you are researching on a topic, searching for software or finding solutions to your problems, Google is your man. Here are some Firefox addons that will enhance the Google Search results page to offer additional information or functionality.
CustomizeGoogle
A must have extension if you are looking to add some functionality to Google. It adds links to perform the same search on other search actions, provide Google’s “suggest” functionality and adds direct links to images from Google’s Image search. The addon is highly customizable and you can configure it by enabling and disabling features according to your liking. In addition to Google search, it also lets you customise other Google services.
Google Enhancer
Another great addon, Google Enhancer offers some pretty neat enhancements. The addon adds icons, numbers, highlighting and various search options to the Google Results page.
WebMynd
One of my favorite addons, Webmynd allows you to spread your search to different sources from the same Google query. The results are displayed as a sidebar on the right side of the Google Search Result page. You can add all your favorite services like Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, Yahoo, Delicious etc.
GooglePreview
The GooglePreview addon adds thumbnail previews and popularity ranks of the websites to Google’s search results so you can check them out before clicking on the individual results.
Google Results Walker
Allows for easier navigation of Google results with the help of mousewheel. You can also get a preview of the search result when you mouse over any result, and mark the results in color or remove them from the list.
Googlepedia
The addons displays a wikipedia article relevant to the Google search you just made. It is great for research on a topic as clicking a link sends another Google query in addition to opening the said Wikipedia page.
Search Cloudlet
Inserts tag clouds on Google, Yahoo and Twitter search result pages to help discover better search terms related to yours. Click on them to further narrow or specify your search.
GoogleTube
This addon adds a YouTube icon to the relevant Google search results. Clicking on the icon opens the YouTube video on the same page for your viewing pleasure.
Back To Google
The simple addon lets you go back to the last Google search that you performed in the current, active tab.
BetterSearch
The addon adds preview thumbnails, site info, “Wayback Machine” and “Open in new window” links to the Google search results.
Google Toolbar
The Google Toolbar lets you search your favorite sites from the toolbar, provide search suggestion and easier access to other Google services as well.
If you liked this article, be sure to check out DeeperWeb as well.
Did we miss any one of your favorites that you can’t live without? Why not mention them in the comments?
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Yep you forgot one:
coolpreviews.com/
Great post Varun, great to see another Indin after Abhijeet who got an oppurtunity to write on Makeuseof,the information is definitely going to be useful for every readers but the most fascinating part is the image of your post,very nice thinking.I use customize Google and Google enhancer, also i recommend using Google preferences in Google home page. There are lots of ways to enhance your experience with Google like show a 100 results on a single page.
Nice article
thanks for sharing these incredible addons
Hey great post!
I use Google all the time and I can’t live without!
And I read Makeuseof every day! One of my favorite blog!
i love webmynd in particular.. very cool.
two things:
1) in google customize, under the gmail section, i selected for it to suppress adds in gmail, but i still see them when i read my e-mails, under “sponsored links” column on the rihgt. Anyone else? Anyways to get rid of those ads in gmail?
2) as far as searching i have almost completely switched from google to scroogle. Scroogle searches google for you anonymously and gives you the google results without giving google all the info about your searching. In addition to keeping close tabs on users, google doesnt show you all the search results. Scroogle shows these results and marks them as “intercepted by google.” I have created a quick search for scroogle with the following URL: https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=%s so i can do quicksearches from the address bar using a keyword. I also use the greasmonkey script “improved scroogle” to get links to google cache with the results and make the results page look like a copy of google.
mojo, instead of this for Scroogle ssl:
https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=%s
you may want to use this for Scroogle ssl:
https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi?Gw=%s
The difference is that nbbwssl.cgi catches a flag that tells the Scroogle program to stay in ssl mode when you do subsequent searches from the Scroogle results page. Otherwise, subsequent searches from the input form on the Scroogle results page will be non-ssl. Apart from this, the nbbw.cgi and nbbwssl.cgi programs are identical.
Good post Varun…….But I think you also need to check out the “LinkExtend” toolbar….which not only does improve google search results by providing company ethics,kidsafe suggestions, security and alexa site ratings….but also has the required options to hide all those unsafe (both security wise and kids-wise) sites from future searches….Their support is outstanding….as they replied to the small problem I mentioned, within an hour and with a solution! :)
Nice post! You should take a look at http://www.SurfCanyon.com – the application helps people find stuff buried in the Google results by re-ranking on the fly. Please let us know what you think. Thanks!
Thanks Mark…:)….and guess what…I’ve offered to write for ur blog ( I sure have a few things up my sleeve :D )…Surfcanyon does look cool…thanks for it,, once again….I’ll try that a.s.a.p….:)
Oops!…sorry…..wrong comment…!!…I am new to this reply notifications thing, and when notified via e-mail….I thought it was @ me…. :D …..Apologies Mark@Surfcanyon….!! :)
These seem to be some pretty cool extensions for Firefox! I am personally not a Firefox fan. However, I was forced to use FF as my browser of choice because I work for kgb.com and that is their browser of choice. (Sorry, I still use that ol’ browser “Internet Explorer” lol) Anyway, my question is “Will adding 1 or even 2 or 3 of these add-on’s to my FF make it run any slower than it already is?”
Well….that’s a good question u asked….and let me tell you….yes…..It may slow down the browser….but not significantly, though….If u are ready to sacrifice a little speed for extensibility (like we all do!)….then go for it….:)
Thanks for mentioning us in your article.
Use our Tag Cloud for results navigation and our Topic Mapping Technologies for immediate access to Wikipedia, Answers, News, Metrics, Blog Search and more:
http://www.DeeperWeb.com
Great information in the article and the comments. As an online research assistant, I use search extensively for business. My favorites are of course, Google, it’s add-on DeeperWeb and SurfCanyon. I have a few narrower specific engines for topics I research more often and/or deeply, but usually those three get me where I need to go pretty quickly.
I’ve found that using scripts to enhance other search engines is counter productive when I can access one that works just as well w/o monkeying with it. Of course I’m not a programmer so may not be doing that part right. :-)
Personally i use greasemonkey script called Google FX http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/31950
uh… bookmarked thread.