7 Google Chrome Extensions You Need to Install

Google Chrome is now the most popular Internet browser in the world. I use it, you probably use it. According to StatCounter, as of December 2012, over 36% of the world favors it too. What makes it thrive is that it’s super fast with a ton of free apps to enhance your browsing experience. These are 7 of my absolute favorite Chrome extensions I make use of each day:
 

#1 Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote - Chrome Extension
Evernote is a powerful note-taking and bookmarking application that’s almost like a virtual extension of your brain. It can be accessed anywhere on just about any device all synchronized via the cloud. Evernote lets you write documents, save ideas, pictures and any webpage you like. It’s an awesome suite of applications, which includes the Evernote Web Clipper to bookmark an entire web page, or specific blocks of text, links, and images. Evernote also lets you group items into desktop like folders, with keyword tagging to find things that you saved really fast. Evernote can help you manage your thoughts and content discovered on the web which alleviates the hassle of having a bunch of open tabs in your browser and old school bookmarks to sort through.
 

#2 Buffer

bufferappBuffer is an easy way to share and schedule content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from anywhere on the web. The bufferapp will also let you collaborate with other team members and analyze your results in real-time giving you key information about your audience engagement like number of retweets, mentions, favorites, potential reach, likes, comments and most importantly actual clicks on your links sent. What makes Buffer special is that you can customize your scheduling slots for each of your social profiles and simultaneously schedule posts with one-click at those different times. Buffer also has some sweet integration with other content discovery sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News and my favorite Google Reader making it easier than ever to find and buffer great new posts into your queue.
 

#3 Screen Capture (by Google)

screen capture by googleScreen Capture allows you to take screenshots of visible content displayed on a tab, region of a webpage, or the whole page area as a PNG image. You can then also make edits to your snapshot like adding text and highlights. Long gone are the days of needing to use ‘print screen’ and pasting images into Microsoft Paint. This extension allows you to capture sharp images of customizable areas and is a must for any blogger or social media marketer looking to take quick screenshots of anything you see.
 

#4 bitly | ♥ your bitmarks

bitlybitly lets you save, share and bundle links of any webpage. You can get a shortened link for any web page with once click. bitly also gives you the ability to customize your short-links like ours http://burst.to. You can choose to save bookmarks as public or private, and curate these ‘bitmarks’ into bundles to share via Twitter, Facebook and more. bitly also provides real-time analytics for the number of clicks your links get giving you the ability to receive pop-up notifications right when your links go viral on social media.
 

#5 AddThis – Share & Bookmark

AddThisAddThis makes it easy to share to Facebook, Twitter and over 300 other social networks. You can fully customize the extension to personalize your list of services. Sometimes you want to share a webpage but the site lacks and sharing buttons making this really useful. Most sites have like and tweet buttons, but when you start getting into the next tier of networks like StumbleUpon and Reddit, this isn’t always the case.
 

#6 SEO for Chrome

seo for chromeSEO for Chrome provides a quick SEO analysis of any website giving you insights into competitive analysis, keyword research, Google Page Rank, Alexa Traffic rank, Compete rank, backlinks and a host of other information. You can use these data points to help give you a general sense of how your website or competitor is doing.
 

#7 Favourite Tabs

favourite tabs extensionsFavourite Tabs is an undercover extension that allows you to save multiple open tabs into categories and then neatly open any set of webpages with one click. This extension is basically a virtual lifesaver for anyone who has the too many open tabs syndrome (like me). Let’s say for example you have 30 open tabs in one window, you could right click and save them as ‘work’, close every tab and launch them all again later with one click. This has bailed me out of countless situations where my computer was jammed because of Chrome, and this gives you a way to graciously save your work and reload later. Also you can use it as a command center to open a group of webpages that you generally go to each day saving you precious time.
too many tabs
 

Each Google Chrome extension is a process continually running in your web browser, so make sure to only enable extensions that you use everyday to avoid degrading your browser performance. You can always re-enable other extensions on a need to use basis.

 
These are some of my favorite Chrome extensions but every individual has a different set of needs that could be addressed through countless other extensions. Just make sure to only leave the ones enabled that continually enhance your browsing experience each day. Feel free to share any awesome extensions you use, I’m always interested to see other great examples.

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.