Best Firefox Plug-Ins - CustomizeGoogle

CustomizeGoogle has literally dozens of features. One of the most talked about is its ability to strip out the ads from Google's websites. Frankly, there are better products for that, and it is one of CustomizeGoogle's least impressive features. So, what makes it such a top plug-in?

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Another area CustomizeGoogle helps with privacy is by preventing your cookies from other websites from being sent to Google. As a web designer and site owner, I (and millions of others) use Google Analytics to help track what users do on my site. Don't worry, its mostly harmless, but it allows a site owner to see things like which pages cause users to stick around, and which ones cause them to click away. The catch is that the same cookies that give the site owner that information can be sent to Google as well even they don't have anything to do with the site. CustomizeGoogle stops this as well.

The privacy features alone make this a Best Firefox Plug-in, but that isn't all it does. Customize Google gives you control over your Google experience in a way that would take you days to setup within Google, or in ways that aren't available from Google.

The best feature of CustomizeGoogle is the ability to filter your search results. I despise Experts-Exchange.com. They come up in search results to technical questions. Click on them and you'll see the question, but if you want to see the answer you have to sign up. FAIL! By adding them to my filter, I never see results from them and don't waste time going to a site that won't be helpful. Once you realize the function is there, you'll be adding others all the time until you have eliminated hundreds of useless, ad-filled, or just annoying websites from the results you see in Google. I only wish there was a keyboard shortcut to the filter window so I could add sites faster.

The most useful settings:

1. Web: Position Counter - for knowing whether this is the 18 ranked site for your search or the 22
2. Images: Stream search result pages – when looking for images, just keep scrolling down, no need to click next, great help when trying to find just the right image in a crowded search
3. Secure – several apps have an option to use the secure HTTPS protocol, you never know these days, and since there is no down side, you might as well always go secure
4. Filter!