We search and click through search results a lot, as this is an essential part of our browsing. Sometimes we are able to quickly see what we were looking for on the target page but more often than not we have to scroll down back and forth to find the exact part of the page that brought us there from the Google search results page.
Having the search terms highlighted on the target page will increase your browsing speed dramatically. This way you can quickly locate the most relevant part of the page and find the required information.
There are three tools that can highlight search terms on the page you land on. Read on to find out about them.
1. Google Toolbar Highlighter
If you have the Google toolbar installed, you may be using its handy highlight feature:
- It highlights each search term in a different color within the Google search results page;
- It highlights each search term in a different color on each result page you go from SERPs;
- It highlights each search term in a different color on each webpage you visit (even when a click did not originate from Google) as long as the highlighter in the toolbar is activated.
- You can click through the terms which occurred on a page using the toolbar:
2. Word Highlight (Greasemonkey)
Word Highlight is a Greasemonkey script which can be a nice alternative to the Google toolbar (in case you don’t want to install it):
- It highlights each search term in a different color within the Google search results page;
- It highlights each search term in a different color on each result page you go from SERPs;
- You can click through the terms which occurred on a page using the toolbar;
- It displays a “heat” map of all colored search terms on a page:
To change the colors to whatever you want, you can edit the script:
- Select Tools -> Greasemonkey -> Manage user scripts;
- Choose “Word highlight“ in the left-hand panel;
- Click “Edit“. This should open the installed version of the script in your favorite text editor (if it doesn’t, choose any text editor to open the script);
- Scroll down to the following line and edit all the colors (for example, you can set one color for all different search terms to make the output less colorful):
3. Google Quick Scroll (Google Chrome)
Google Quick Scroll is a Google Chrome extension that scrolls the target page right to the place you saw in Google snippet:
- It works only if the search terms are hard to locate on the page you landed on after clicking through from the search result listing: it appears on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page.
- It highlights the part of the page that looks most relevant to your initial query.
Are you using any of these tools? Do you find them helpful? Do you know of any others? Please share your thoughts!
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What about Safari in OS X?
I am afraid I am not aware of similar tools for Safari. Anyone?
The oldest tool is perhaps the Yahoo Toobar. In many old SEO training videos I found people using it. Quirk Searchstatus (http://www.quirk.biz/searchsta… addon for Firefox also has this option.
Where is the link for Google Quick Scroll?
Oh sorry, forgot to link.
It can be found here:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjnmnbdibhgpbllgc
just added it to the article
The oldest tool is perhaps the Yahoo Toobar. In many old SEO training videos I found people using it. Quirk Searchstatus (http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus) addon for Firefox also has this option.
Good additions, Asif. I am using Searchstatus daily – where do I turn on that option. “Highlight keyword” seems to work a bit differently – or is the one you mean?
Oh sorry, forgot to link.
It can be found here:
https://chrome.google.com/exte…
I have tried a number of these but find they tend to slow the response time of the search results.
Has anyone else had this problem.
Hi Ann, I had Google Quick Scroll installed a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure how to make good use of it, with your tips I should be able to “make use of” it now! Thank you!
One more thing – I really like the YoLinks Extension for Chrome. Have you tried that one yet? Excellent tool that I don’t hear much about, I’m planning to do a screencast this week.
I have tried a number of these but find they tend to slow the response time of the search results.
Has anyone else had this problem.
I am not sure of this one. I always use Google Toolbar when on FireFox and Google QuickScroll when on Chrome and never really noticed any delay in response time. But then again, maybe I am just used to it..
Hi Ann, I had Google Quick Scroll installed a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure how to make good use of it, with your tips I should be able to “make use of” it now! Thank you!
One more thing – I really like the YoLinks Extension for Chrome. Have you tried that one yet? Excellent tool that I don’t hear much about, I’m planning to do a screencast this week.
Thanks Ileane! I’ll make sure to take a closer look at YoLinks Extension now!
The easiest way to see the highlighted terms when doing a search in Google, is to click on the Cache version of the website. All of the search terms are automatically highlighted.
That’s true! thanks! but the few things to remember:
- Cache is often outdated (Google may be updating it once a week or once per three days for the smaller sites or for older posts in the blog)
- Some sites use nocache meta tag to prevent Google from saving and showing it
Yes the cached version can be outdated, but it is the cached version that I am searching when I do a Google search. What frequently happens is that I go to the non-cached version of the website and can’t find my search words anywhere at all. But when I go to the cached version, there they are. So in other words, the website has been updated since the time that Google crawled the site. So by going to the cached version I can quickly determine if the website has what I want, and if not, I move on.
That’s true! thanks! but the few things to remember:
- Cache is often outdated (Google may be updating it once a week or once per three days for the smaller sites or for older posts in the blog)
- Some sites use nocache meta tag to prevent Google from saving and showing it
That “fn 3″ is the same as the Mac “Command f” In Safari I use the following Javascript bookmarklet to accomplish a search/highlight:
javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20count=0,%20text,%20dv;text=prompt(%22Search%20phrase:%22,%20%22%22);if(text==null%20%7C%7C%20text.length==0)return;dv=document.defaultView;function%20searchWithinNode(node,%20te,%20len)%7Bvar%20pos,%20skip,%20spannode,%20middlebit,%20endbit,%20middleclone;skip=0;if(%20node.nodeType==3%20)%7Bpos=node.data.toUpperCase().indexOf(te);if(pos%3E=0)%7Bspannode=document.createElement(%22SPAN%22);spannode.style.backgroundColor=%22yellow%22;middlebit=node.splitText(pos);endbit=middlebit.splitText(len);middleclone=middlebit.cloneNode(true);spannode.appendChild(middleclone);middlebit.parentNode.replaceChild(spannode,middlebit);++count;skip=1;%7D%7Delse%20if(%20node.nodeType==1&&%20node.childNodes%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase()!=%22SCRIPT%22%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase!=%22STYLE%22)%7Bfor%20(var%20child=0;%20child%20%3C%20node.childNodes.length;%20++child)%7Bchild=child+searchWithinNode(node.childNodes%5Bchild%5D,%20te,%20len);%7D%7Dreturn%20skip;%7Dwindow.status=%22Searching%20for%20′%22+text+%22′…%22;searchWithinNode(document.body,%20text.toUpperCase(),%20text.length);window.status=%22Found%20%22+count+%22%20occurrence%22+(count==1?%22%22:%22s%22)+%22%20of%20′%22+text+%22′.%22;%7D)();
For all Mac users on Firefox, press fn and hold down 3 and you’ll see a toolbar at the bottom that lets you highlight any word you like on your current page.
That “fn 3″ is the same as the Mac “Command f” In Safari I use the following Javascript bookmarklet to accomplish a search/highlight:
javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20count=0,%20text,%20dv;text=prompt(%22Search%20phrase:%22,%20%22%22);if(text==null%20%7C%7C%20text.length==0)return;dv=document.defaultView;function%20searchWithinNode(node,%20te,%20len)%7Bvar%20pos,%20skip,%20spannode,%20middlebit,%20endbit,%20middleclone;skip=0;if(%20node.nodeType==3%20)%7Bpos=node.data.toUpperCase().indexOf(te);if(pos%3E=0)%7Bspannode=document.createElement(%22SPAN%22);spannode.style.backgroundColor=%22yellow%22;middlebit=node.splitText(pos);endbit=middlebit.splitText(len);middleclone=middlebit.cloneNode(true);spannode.appendChild(middleclone);middlebit.parentNode.replaceChild(spannode,middlebit);++count;skip=1;%7D%7Delse%20if(%20node.nodeType==1&&%20node.childNodes%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase()!=%22SCRIPT%22%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase!=%22STYLE%22)%7Bfor%20(var%20child=0;%20child%20%3C%20node.childNodes.length;%20++child)%7Bchild=child+searchWithinNode(node.childNodes%5Bchild%5D,%20te,%20len);%7D%7Dreturn%20skip;%7Dwindow.status=%22Searching%20for%20′%22+text+%22′…%22;searchWithinNode(document.body,%20text.toUpperCase(),%20text.length);window.status=%22Found%20%22+count+%22%20occurrence%22+(count==1?%22%22:%22s%22)+%22%20of%20′%22+text+%22′.%22;%7D)();
This feature is built in for Apple’s Safari. When on a web page hold down the Command key plus the F key. A little drop down field appears on the top right hand side of the page, where you type what you are searching for and all those words (or parts of words) are highlighted in yellow. Works beautifully.
does high lighting words help ranking in google. Ive just designed my new website http://www.mind2body4health.co… and trying to understand how i can get more traffic, i used webplus x4 to design it. I would be very greatfull for any advise? i dont understand how some websites manage to achieve over 10,000 back links.