10 must have Google Chrome extensions for Bloggers

Ever since Google Chrome got support for extensions, people have been flocking in large numbers from Firefox. This is evident by Chrome’s rapidly growing market share, which has surpassed Safari, the supposedly ‘world’s fastest and best browser’ ( as said by Steve Jobs ). But for bloggers to make a switch to a new browser, we must have our desired extensions available to even think of it. Extensions which make blogging easier for us, and put a lot information at our disposal at just a few clicks or even none if possible. I’ve compiled a list of such extensions which every blogger would love to have as a part of their blogging repertoire while using Google Chrome.

(click on the images to go to their pages in the Google Chrome extensions gallery)

 

 

Google Mail Checker is useful if you use Gmail or Google Apps for your email needs. Just a click takes you to your inbox. And if you’ve got the offline feature enabled in Gmail to go with Google Mail Checker, you’ve got a great offline email client as well!

 

 

 

Kuber PageRank Checker show the Google page rank of website when it loads. The page rank is shown as an overlay on top of its button which is pretty cool since you don’t have to click anything. Clicking on the button show Alexa ranking and links for the website as well as a quick link to its Whois information.

 

 

 

 

The whos.amung.us is a definite must have if you use it on your website/blog. It shows the number of online users on the button which updates in real time (almost). Clicking it opens up the stats page.

 

 

 

Chrome SEO is another extension similar to Kuber PageRank Checker, but it shows a ton of information in the on-click drop down menu which includes the number pages indexed by Bing, Google and Yahoo, backlinks, traffic and rank in Alexa, Compete, Google PR, Quantcast, Technorati, social bookmarks as well as domain details. All this in a convenient menu, but most of the features don’t work yet. It’s still a must have extension since it saves you from having to go to different websites and find all this information manually. 

 

 

 

Google Reader notifier shows the unread feed count as well as a few unread items from your feeds list. Really useful to catch up quickly on what’s new and happening in the blogosphere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TwitterBar lets you tweet right from the Google Chrome toolbar. Clicking the button opens up a text field which not only lets you tweet, but also shortens the URL of the current page as well as fetches the title. Great for sharing links quickly.

 

 

 

I have yet to meet a blogger who doesn’t have Facebook open all the time. Now that we all have Facebook fan pages for our blogs, it’s even more essential to stay up to date. Maybe not, but it’s still Facebook – you know you have to stay connected ;) .  This is one of the best Facebook extensions I’ve used. You can keep an eye on your wall, live feed and notifications as well as update your status from it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bit.ly is my URL shortening service of choice. One of the reasons being the statistics and tracking of shortened URLs from the Bit.ly website. Now they have their very own Google Chrome extension as well. Using it, you can shorten the URL as well as share it on social networks. Statistics are also available in the extension. When you hover over a bit.ly link in the browser, the full URL as well as the number of clicks it got are shown.

 

 

 

 

Picnick extension lets you use any image, or a screenshot of any website and edit it online using Picnik. You can then use that image in your blog posts, email it or share it on different social networks. The great thing about this extensions is that without the need of installing any software, it provides you simple yet very useful editing tools that you just can’t blog without.

 

 

 

AddThis lets you share content to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and many more social websites ( around 200! ) with only a couple of clicks. You can even translate websites, print and email them. The services auto arrange themselves based on your usage. A handy extension for all social media consumers amongst us.

This is our list of what we think are 10 must have Google Chrome extensions for bloggers. Your choices might vary since there are multiple extensions available for every purpose in Google Chrome. Let us know if we missed your favorite extension for blogging in the comments below.