How much do you search? As you read this blog, you are likely to search quite a lot. This post is aimed to enhance your search productivity by showing you how to search multiple search engines with one click of a mouse! 1. Web Search
Having some useful reference information by hand when writing a post or doing research online is an awesome way to both get more productive and also to create a thorough, deeper-researched copies. Therefore you may find the following two tips useful as well as easy to implement in your daily routine. 1. Access reference information while you write or read: take advantage of MS Word’s Lookup Feature I am using Microsoft Word Lookup feature which I find very useful. Unfortunately, too many people are absolutely unaware of it. So, when writing or reading the post in Word, just highlight any word, then right click and select “Look up”: A sidebar panel will open with the reference information for the selected word: You can configure the reference info sources by “Research options” right in the sidebar panel. In the dialog, you can select more sources, add your own or exclude those you don’t need: 2. Access reference information while you browse the web: take advantage of Lookitup Greasemonkey script There’s one handy Greasemonkey script that allows to quickly look up any word in a number of configured online reference sources. The script is LookItUp and it works as follows: Install the script (get the Greasemonkey for that); While reading online, select any word and click the reference source short key. Some of the default short keys include: w – look it up in Wikipedia d – look it up in Google definitions u – urban dictionary The sources and the short keys can all be configured (deleted, moved, added, etc) via the tool Options (accessed via FireFox Tools -> Greasemonkey -> User Script Commands -> LookItUp settings). Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Always Have Reference Info by Hand When
Although not widely used, DEFINE: Google search operator is very helpful especially for the quick access to the list of reference sources and definitions. For those who use this operator on a regular basis or just plan to give it a try, today’s FireFox Friday post is about making DEFINE operator easier to access in FireFox: Define: Define FireFox addon allows to search the definitions of the highlighted text at Google. Just select any term on the current page, right-click on it and select “Define” in the context menu. The search results will open in the new tab: Inline Google
It’s fair to say that most of us are running Google Analytics on at least a few of the sites we deal with. Market share for Google’s traffic tracking platform was estimated last year around 75-80% in a few separate studies – here’s one from Ghostery . Let’s not get into the whole “Google knows too much” thing. The truth is, the platform is a pretty solid and user-friendly. (Even if it is the lure of an evil empire.) But from an SEO standpoint Google ANalytics definitely leaves some things to be desired. Luckily there are plenty of clever SEOs out there who take on complicated and difficult projects that make our lives easier. Here are five such supergeek gifts that hack Google Analytics into a killer SEO tool: 1. Ranking Tracking with Google