Google Chrome browser extensions allow you to increase productivity, reduce distractions, and source content — all in the comfort of your internet browser.
The best part is that you have plenty of options. The Google Chrome web store offers a variety of different tools that help you become safer, smarter, and more productive with just one click. We’ve curated the best ones here.
We can’t guarantee that these extensions will make puppy YouTube videos less tempting to watch, but we recommend them for busy marketers who want to make their time online more efficient. We’ve broken them down into different categories if you want to jump ahead:
Please note: All of these are free tools, but some of the services that they work with may have paid features or subscriptions.
For all of the greatness that the internet affords — cute animal videos, GIFs, and interesting blogs — one of its biggest downsides is how distracting it can be. How many times have you sat down to work and been pulled into a pit of procrastination?
Perhaps you get absorbed in updates on social media, or maybe you click through Wikipedia trying to determine what exactly Gina Rodriguez’s first TV role was (it was on Law & Order). No matter where you click online, it’s easy to be pulled into a black hole of distraction and low productivity.
Check out the extensions below to remedy this problem and be your most productive self.
1. HubSpot Sales
Users: 800K+
HubSpot’s Sales tool connects your email inbox with your CRM. Instead of having to navigate back and forth between the two products, this extension allows you to transfer contact information from your email directly into your CRM. This saves employees time in their day-to-day workflow and retains valuable information about customers.
Another cool feature that HubSpot Sales provides is the tracking and logging of emails. Users can send emails and receive alerts when their message is delivered, opened, and clicked on. The email thread can then be logged continuously into the CRM throughout the entire correspondence.
2. Todoist
Users: 700K+
Todoist is a project management tool that lets you create highly organized and visually appealing to-do lists across all of your devices. What’s neat about the Chrome extension is that you can see your to-do list, or your team’s shared lists, and add tasks to it without having to open a separate tab, app, or device.
3. Reply
Users: 10K+
Reply’s Chrome extension helps you research and engage with your potential prospects on LinkedIn. This is a fast and easy way to find and verify anyone’s email address — both one by one or in bulk using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Once you get the contacts, you can sync them to your CRM — including HubSpot — or connect with the prospects right away.
4. StayFocusd
Users: 600K+
StayFocusd lets you budget your time on specific websites so you can eliminate distractions when you need to buckle down and work. It’s highly customizable — you could set your time limit to 20 minutes on Twitter and only five minutes on Facebook, for example. It also has neat features like the Require Challenge: Once you set time limits on sites, if you want to go back and change your settings, you have to complete a challenge (think: retyping a piece of text without typos or answering questions).
5. LastPass
Users: 10M+
LastPass is a password manager that autofills in passwords for all of the accounts you save with this extension. You only have to remember one password: your LastPass password. This saves you time and headaches and increases the security of your personal data.
6. Add to Trello
Users: 10K+
If you use Trello for project management, team collaboration, your content calendar, or just a personal to-do list, this extension lets you easily add links as cards to your Trello boards.
7. Extensions Manager
Users: 100K+
We couldn’t give you 50+ different extensions to try out without also suggesting Extensions Manager. Try this tool to organize all of your extensions so they don’t take up half of your browser’s screen. It shows you what extensions you have operating on Google Chrome and gives you the option to hide some of the icons to keep your browser better organized.
8. Toggl Track
Users: 300K+
If you often find yourself spending too much time on one task — to the point that you no longer have time to complete other tasks — consider using the Toggl Track Chrome extension. It initiates a timer right within the comfort of the browser. There’s no need to start a timer on your phone. Simply open up the extension and begin tracking the time you spend on tasks.
9. Print Friendly & PDF
Users: 700K+
If you ever need to save a page in a print-friendly format or as a PDF, you can easily do so with the Print Friendly & PDF Chrome extension. The extension removes ads and other cluttering elements from the web page to turn it into a pleasant reading experience. You can also delete images and change the text size.
10. Email Finder
Users: 200K+
Whether you’re carrying out sales outreach, seeking guest blogging opportunities, or looking for the owner of a small website, Email Finder will automatically give you a list of verified emails associated with that domain. It’s an absolutely brilliant tool for sales reps and marketers who want to save time when looking for potential contacts at a company.
1. HTTPS Everywhere
Users: 2M+
“HTTPS” is a website protocol that ensures a site is secure before you visit it. And although you might recognize this tag at the beginning of most websites, it’s not quite ubiquitous across the internet — nor does it guarantee that the site you’re browsing is 100% secure.
The Chrome extension, HTTPS Everywhere, rewrites the request you send to any website you visit in Chrome so you can be sure your browser produces the secure version of that site. Browse assured that all your personal information is kept safe and your computer doesn’t catch malware while you’re online.
2. Click&Clean
Users: 1M+
If you’re constantly searching and downloading work material during the day, it can be a tedious task to clear your browser history. You just don’t have the time to keep pulling up your history page and manually clearing your cache or download log.
The Click&Clean extension for Chrome allows you to clear your cache, URL searches, website cookies, and download history with a single click of a button on your browser toolbar. The extension can also scan your computer for viruses and clean up your hard drive of unused applications — helping your computer run faster as a result.
3. J2TEAM Security
Users: 200K+
J2TEAM Security isn’t your average firewall. This Chrome extension starts with basic virus protection. It also allows you to customize your website block list and ensures your Chrome browser uses the “HTTPS” security tag on blogging sites — preventing you from visiting user blogs that are deemed unsafe.
The extension also offers a variety of Facebook-specific privacy settings, such as blocking the “seen” tag after you read certain private messages and hiding how long you’ve been active in Facebook Messenger.
4. Ghostery
Users: 2M+
Ghostery is a sophisticated ad-blocking extension designed to remove ads that distract or interrupt you while you’re viewing specific website content. It also disguises your browsing data so ad-tracking tools are unable to collect personal information that you’d prefer to keep private. These features help to speed up webpages’ load time and ultimately improve your browsing experience.
5. Checkbot
Users: 40K+
Checkbot combines technical SEO with modern security to help you analyze both how safe and how optimized a website is for search engines. Because search engines like Google prioritize website security in addition to content quality in their rankings, this Chrome extension is a handy one-two punch for content creators and web developers.
Checkbot can test the page speed, SEO, and overall security of more than 250 URLs per domain for free — and help you improve in these three categories to protect you and your website visitors from unsafe material.
6. Avast Online Security
Users: 10M+
Avast Online Security is known as a “web reputation plugin,” examining each individual website you visit for suspicious information. The extension also warns you if the site you’re visiting simply has a bad reputation. In turn, you can rate the websites you visit to help Avast get better at flagging potentially unsafe webpages while on Chrome.
7. FlowCrypt
Users: 70K+
This security extension is specific to emails, allowing you to send and receive encrypted emails (and attachments) to and from your colleagues. It’s one of the best ways to be sure your emails are kept private and secure while in transit to the recipient.
FlowCrypt uses PGP encryption, which stands for “Pretty Good Privacy” — the standard for encryption in most email clients. The tool integrates perfectly with Gmail, adding a “Secure Compose” button to your inbox.
8. Fair AdBlocker
Users: 1M+
Fair AdBlocker offers both malware and adware in one browser extension. The tool protects you from malware as well as distracting ads and pop-ups. Once installed, you can configure your blocking settings to hide the types of ads you’re least interested in seeing — especially those that carry dangerous information that can infect your computer.
9. Speedtest by Ookla
Users: 2M+
Find out how fast your internet connection is and learn how quickly websites are loading. Knowing this information can help you move to another internet connection if needed, and you’ll also get to see performance metrics for your own site.
10. Hola Free VPN
Users: 7M+
Whether you need to cloak your identity online or browse content from another country, Hola Free VPN allows you to do that for free. The tool can help you browse the internet safely and anonymously without needing to pay for an external VPN service.
Chrome Extensions for Social Media
1. Bitly
Users: 500K+
This extension lets marketers quickly and easily shorten links and share them on social media directly from their browser. This is particularly useful for social media marketers and allows for personalization with an Enterprise plan.
2. BuzzSumo
Users: 20K+
BuzzSumo provides insight into how content is performing. When you’re on a web page, click the extension to show metrics such as the number of social shares and backlinks to a piece. This tool provides an easy way to see how much engagement your content is generating. You could also use BuzzSumo to perform competitor analysis and uncover strategies that might make your content more shareable.
3. Pinterest
Users: 8M+
This extension allows you to easily save items onto your Pinterest boards without navigating away from what you’re doing. What’s neat about this tool is that it shows you multiple pinnable items available on each website so you can save more than one item to your board at a time. (Normally, you would have to click into each blog post or image in order to separately pin each to your boards individually.)
4. Save to Facebook
Users: 1M+
Facebook’s “Save” feature lets users aggregate links, images, and videos they find on Facebook in one location in their account. This extension allows you to do the same from anywhere on the web, making Facebook a centralized place to save content you’re interested in checking out later.
5. RiteTag
Users: 30K+
RiteTag shows you how hashtags are performing on Twitter and Facebook before you post content. Once you log in to RiteTag using your Twitter or Facebook credentials, it checks the hashtags you begin typing in real time and color codes them:
- If your hashtag is green, it means the hashtag will help your content be seen now.
- If your hashtag is blue, it means the hashtag will help your content be seen over time.
- If your hashtag is gray, you should select a new hashtag because it has low levels of engagement.
- If your hashtag is red, you should select a new hashtag because it’s so popular, your content will disappear into the crowd.
6. Buffer
Users: 200K+
Buffer allows you to easily share content from any website to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles. If you’re a Buffer customer, you can also use the extension to schedule posts from your browser without needing to access the Buffer website. You can also queue posts for future publication.
7. App for Instagram
Users: 90K
Want to keep tabs on Instagram notifications without having to constantly check your phone? With this extension, users can see what’s happening on their Instagram content directly within their browser. As opposed to having to check your phone, you can access your Instagram feed right in the browser and see other Instagram user’s content in much greater detail.
8. Reddit Enhancement Suite
Users: 1M+
Do you regularly use Reddit in your personal life or in your marketing efforts? And are you specifically a fan of the old version of Reddit? Download the Reddit Enhancement Suite Chrome extension to enhance your experience on the website and browse posts much more easily than you did before. This extension is only compatible with the original version of Reddit.
9. SocialAnalyzer
Users: 800+
SocialAnalyzer is a social media monitoring tool that allows you to keep up with trending posts in one of your target markets or industries. See the most recently published posts and videos on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, and see whether people are interacting with the content that people are already publishing. You can use this tool to further refine your social media marketing efforts and track brand sentiment.
10. HubSpot Social
Users: 20K+
Are you a current HubSpot customer? HubSpot Social allows you to post on your social media profiles straight from your browser. You can schedule posts in advance, share a quote from an external article directly to your social feed, and share webpages, too. No need to access your HubSpot portal in another tab. Do it straight from your current webpage.
Chrome Extensions for SEO
1. SEOQuake
Users: 700K+
SEOQuake is a Chrome extension that allows SEO marketers to easily get insights about different websites without leaving their web browser. With one click, you can find search ranking and backlink information about the search results on a Google results page. It also provides details about the amount of backlinks the website has (according to SEMRush), shows you the keyword density of a page, and lists external and internal links.
2. Check My Links
Users: 200K+
Check My Links does what it says it will: It quickly scans web pages and shows you which links are working properly and which are broken. With this extension, marketers can ensure that their own websites are functioning properly for their visitors. Additionally, marketers can check for broken backlinks to their content on other websites. That way, they can build backlinks to their content and increase their domain authority.
3. NoFollow
Users: 100K+
NoFollow quickly indexes web pages and identifies links that are coded with the no-follow metatag. No-follow links aren’t crawled by search engines and don’t contribute to search engine authority, so SEOs can use this extension to determine if external sites are backlinking to them with followed, or indexed, links.
Additionally, you might use no-follow links on web pages you don’t want crawled, such as a landing page or thank you page, and this extension can easily double-check if you’ve coded links correctly. In the example screenshot below, no-follow links are highlighted in red.
4. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
Users: 80K+
Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is an SEO tool that’s great for beginners and experts alike. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a Google Chrome plugin that lives in the search engine results page (SERP), so you can get SEO insights for every website and keyword, all while you Google search.
Discover thousands of the best performing keywords to target for SEO & PPC. Spy on your competitor’s Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram ads, and find the best backlink opportunities.
5. Impactana
Users: 2K+
Impactana’s Chrome toolbar offers a wealth of SEO, social media, and content marketing information about any web page. Its two biggest metrics are “Buzz,” which measures a website’s reach on social media, and “Impact,” which measures SEO metrics such as click-through rate, backlinks, and time on page. It also shares details like author and publisher contact information that are useful for PR professionals.
6. Keyword Surfer
Users: 300K+
Keyword Surfer is just like the Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs Chrome extension in that it gives you related keywords for your industry-related searches. You can see the monthly search volume for the keyword and generate an article outline that could potentially help you rank for the keyword. The tool also allows you to see the word count of competing pages and articles.
7. Link Research SEO Toolbar
Users: 10K+
Link Research SEO Toolbar allows you to see the core metrics of a website and understand how well it performs against the competition. The Chrome extension is best paired with an active Link Research Tools subscription to get the most out of it.
8. SEO META in 1 CLICK
Users: 200K+
SEO META in 1 CLICK is a fantastic tool for seeing a website’s meta information in — you guessed it — a single click! No need to right-click, hit “View Page Source,” and read through line after line of code to see a website’s meta description. You can use this as a competitive research tool to see what your top-ranked competitors are putting in their meta descriptions.
You can also use it to double-check that your website is optimized across the board. It even offers shortcuts to check the mobile friendliness of your website and analyze the keyword density of the page.
9. Serpstat Website SEO Checker
Users: 20K+
Analyze your competitors’ performance with the Serpstat Website SEO Checker extension. Depending on your competitors’ website security, you’ll be able to detect their CMS, sitemap status, structured data, and more. When you sign up for a Serpstat account, you can also see the page’s top keywords and traffic.
10. SEO Minion
Users: 100K+
SEO Minion allows you to carry out in-depth competitor research by giving you access to your competitor’s website metrics and data. You can also check for broken links, highlight all links, and preview how the page appears in the SERPs — all handy tools for examining your own webpages and articles and ensuring they’re in tip-top shape.
1. OneTab
Users: 2M+
When you conduct research for a piece of content, it’s easy to get swamped in multiple open tabs with great resources you want to cite. The trouble is, once it comes time to write and refer back to the sources, it’s hard to navigate between all of the tabs. Luckily, OneTab lets you put multiple different URLs into a single tab for easy reference.
2. Momentum
Users: 3M+
Momentum is a simple Chrome extension that replaces blank new tabs with beautiful photography, inspiring quotes, weather reports, and a space for you to write down a priority for the day when you open up your browser for the first time. (Don’t worry — the temperature is in Celsius, it’s not that cold in Boston.)
3. Blank New Tab Page
Users: 30K+
Blank New Tab Page is exactly what it sounds like — a completely blank, white page when you open a new tab in Chrome. Today’s browser settings and themes — and new versions of Google Chrome — display previews of recently visited websites or a Google Search bar on new tabs when you open them. If all you want is a blank page to navigate somewhere new, this Chrome extension is what you’re looking for.
4. Infinity New Tab
Users: 400K+
Infinity New Tab includes a feature known as Speed Dial on every new tab you open in Chrome. This feature produces large icon-based shortcuts to your most frequently visited websites, as shown in the screenshot above. You can customize these icons with new websites as needed, and add productivity widgets like to-do lists to each new tab as well.
5. Start.me
Users: 70K+
With Start.me, you turn each new tab you open in Chrome into a personal dashboard. You can populate this dashboard with webpage bookmarks, productivity widgets, news feeds from specific websites, and various photos and videos. If you prefer to keep your daily schedule online, rather than in print or on your desktop, you might find this extension useful.
6. Earth View
Users: 900K+
This Chrome extension might not make your browsing experience easier, but it will make it prettier. Broaden your geography skills while surfing the internet at the same time with Earth View by Google. Each time you open a new tab, the first thing you’ll see is a satellite image of a beautiful location somewhere on Earth. See some of the images that pop up on new tabs in the screenshot above.
7. Infinite New Tab
Users: 200K+
Not to be confused with “Infinity New Tab” (the fourth new tab extension on this list), this browser accessory turns your new tab into a canvas. Choose from more than 100 wallpapers to customize your new tab background, as well as a reminder list and note pad for staying on task.
8. Homey
Users: 30K+
Homey is a relaxing and uncluttered new tab Chrome extension that turns your new tab page into a dashboard. You can see your city’s weather, access your bookmarks, or create a grid with your most-frequented websites. Alternatively, you can keep the dashboard clean and mess-free for a less overwhelming experience. Like most new tab Chrome extensions, it also gives you access to the search engine of your choice.
9. New Tab Redirect
Users: 600K+
Got a website you always need to have open? This Chrome extension automatically opens a page of your choice when clicking on a new tab. The tool can even redirect to a specific file you have saved in Google Drive or elsewhere online.
10. Speed Dial
Users: 600K+
Speed Dial is a charmingly old-school Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a 3D dashboard. Access your bookmarks and more frequented sites in a dashboard that might just remind you of your MySpace days. Don’t let its design fool you: The extension is constantly updated for performance and user-friendliness.
Chrome Extensions for Content Sourcing
Sometimes you just need a good content curation tool to help you save important information while you’re researching or writing a blog post.
1. OneNote Web Clipper
Users: 1M+
Are you a OneNote user? Whether you’re conducting research for a project or simply reading different articles online, you most likely come across resources that you want to save and return to for later use.
That’s where OneNote Web Clipper comes in. Instead of saving content to another application or document, you can save it directly to your existing OneNote notebooks for easy reference when you sit down to write a blog post or web page. The best part? Everything will be available on any device where you use OneNote.
2. AwesomeScreenshot
Users: 2M+
AwesomeScreenshot is a screen capture extension with capabilities for annotation and photo editing while staying in your browser. Once you take a screenshot of a selected area of your screen or an entire web page, you can crop, highlight, draw shapes, and blur sensitive information.
3. Evernote Web Clipper
Users: 3M+
Evernote is a note-taking and organization app that can be shared across teams for content collaboration. With the Evernote Web Clipper extension, users can save links onto a clipboard within their Evernote app for later reading and reference.
4. Giphy for Chrome
Users: 300K+
Everyone loves animated GIFs. They make emails, blogs, and social media posts engaging and funny, and with this extension, you can easily grab a GIF from Giphy’s huge database for whatever content you’re working on without navigating away.
5. Sidebar
Users: 20K+
Manually bookmarking websites can sometimes be a tedious process. Sidebar allows you to organize websites you want to save without having to open a new tab. Save websites to bookmarks, create folders, and add notes for later reference.
6. Distill Web Monitor
Users: 200K+
Distill Web Monitor allows you to keep track of changes to websites or articles that you’ve cited in your own work. That way, you can ensure that you’re providing the most up-to-date information to your readers and website visitors. You can also use it to simply track pages that you’re interested in citing in the future.
7. Nimbus Screenshot
Users: 1M+
Nimbus Screenshot is another screenshotting extension that will live within your browser, making it easier than ever to capture a partial or entire page. It will automatically save your screenshots to the cloud, ensuring that you don’t lose them.
8. LibKey Nomad
Users: 200K+
For marketers and bloggers who work in technical or research-based industries, LibKey Nomad can be an extremely useful Chrome extension to have in your arsenal. The extension allows you to find, access, and source millions of scholarly articles based on the library that you primarily use.
9. Video Downloader Professional
Users: 300K+
Do you need to source non-YouTube-based videos for your blog posts? Check out Video Downloader Professional, a Chrome extension that allows you to download videos from the internet. This is particularly useful if you find a video on Twitter, Facebook, or other external website where the embed code or original video link isn’t available.
10. Google Scholar Button
Users: 2M+
Google Scholar is another tool you can use if you write content in a technical, scientific, or otherwise research-heavy industry. You can find articles and books straight from the comfort of your browser. The tool sometimes links to the article’s landing page on a research website, and sometimes it links directly to the PDF. Either way, it’s a great way to streamline research so you don’t have to manually search for books and articles online.
Chrome Extensions for Blogging
1. Grammarly
Users: 10M+
Grammarly is my go-to app for reviewing blog posts for proper spelling, grammar, and word use. You can drop large pieces of text into the desktop application for review, or you can use the handy Chrome extension to call out any grammar errors you’re making while typing on the web.
2. Google Dictionary
Users: 3M+
Have you ever come across a word you’re not familiar with while doing research online? Instead of Googling it in a separate tab, quickly highlight the word and click on the Google Dictionary extension to get the definition.
3. Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides
Users: Not Published
For those times when you and your coworkers are working on computers with different operating systems, or want to collaborate on a live document together, check out Office Editing. This extension lets you easily drop Microsoft Office files into Google Drive to view and edit them without needing the software installed on your hard drive.
4. Difree
Users: 8
Sometimes it’s hard to free yourself of distractions to write productively, especially if you’re writing online. This new extension quickly opens a new tab for a clean and neutral text editor that auto-saves while you’re working if you need a break from where you normally write.
5. LanguageTool
Users: 1M+
LanguageTool is a useful Chrome extension for checking the existing text on a website and checking the grammar of your work as you write. It works in Google Docs and any website where there’s an active text box. It also works for different languages, so if you’re aiming to write for different markets and regions, you’ll most definitely want to add this tool to your arsenal.
6. Wordtune
Users: 200K+
Wordtune is an AI-powered Chrome extension that provides several alternatives to what’s currently on the page. No matter what tool you’re using — whether it’s Google Docs, Outlook, or another text editor — you can highlight the sentence or phrase you’d like to rewrite, and Wordtune will provide several alternatives. After that, you only have to choose the one you like best.
7. ProWritingAid
Users: 200K+
ProWritingAid is another smart Chrome extension for checking the grammar, spelling, and clarity of your blog posts, web pages, and articles. Like the other tools on this list, it works with Google Docs and any text editor in your browser. It will catch any errors you make as you write and suggest corrections.
8. Readme
Users: 100K+
Readme is a text-to-speech reader that works right within your Chrome browser to increase accessibility as you write or read articles. It can also help you listen to your drafts out loud for proofreading purposes. Listening to your writing can be an excellent way to catch errors.
9. Helperbird
Users: 20K+
Helperbird is an accessibility Chrome extension that can help writers with dyslexia, blindness, or other disabilities work more efficiently. You can change the font of the page, change the font sizes, use a magnifier, and turn text into speech. You can also turn pages and articles into a plain-text “Reader Mode” for easier reading and scanning.
10. MyBib
Users: 800K+
Do you list citations in your blog posts and articles? Use the MyBib Chrome extension to create citations right within the browser. Simply travel to the page, Tweet, article, or video you’d like to cite, select the format you’d like to cite it in, and then copy and paste. Alternatively, if you’re collecting various sources, save it to a “Project.” You’ll then be able to download all of your works cited in any format you prefer.
Bonus: It gives you an in-text citation, too. Absolutely brilliant.
More Chrome Extensions Equals More Productivity
Now that your browser is loaded with extensions to make marketing easier on a day-to-day basis, test them out to see what time and efficiencies you’re able to save. When you’re ready to work on your next piece of content, try all of the tools listed above to make the process less painful and time-intensive. Your team will thank you for it.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
