Firefox Search tools & add ons

First of all Firefox is a great web browser and its free: www.mozilla.com. Secondly there are plenty of add ons for Firefox. These are easily added here: addons.mozilla.org

Some of the add-ons I have found that have been particularly helpful for search engine marketing include:

- Rank Checker is a Firefox add on that indicates your websites position in the search engines for specific keywords: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

- CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension
that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). www.customizegoogle.com

- Adsense preview: Preview the Google ads that may show on any web page. addons.mozilla.org/adsensepreview

- Fast Dial gives you fast access to your favorite sites through thumbnails, like Opera speed dial: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5721

Wikia Search

So Wikia Search is finally here: alpha.search.wikia.com

Wikia have been working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine. They have released the alpha version. However to their own admittance the relevance and quality of searches are poor (for now apparently).

"We are aware that the quality of the search results is low..

Wikia's search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often."

Once you make a search you can rate websites on how relevant they are via a five star system. Therefore the more people search and rate the better Wikia search becomes. There is also the option to discuss the results, hence social searching.

There was a lot of hype surrounding Wikia Search causing disappointment from searchers who were expecting something more unique and exciting!