Firefox is Six Years Old: The browser`s impact on SEO
There is a fox on fire and it`s not animal cruelty!
It`s Firefox`s birthday and they are the grand old age of 6 this year, proving that non-profit organisations can provide something that can compete and have a bright future within the browser industry. That non-profit organisation was Mozilla and they released Firefox 1.0 in 2004 and went into direct competition against the industry giant Microsoft and Internet Explorer. To most people who use Windows they would undoubtedly be familiar with Internet Explorer, even if they dont necessarily use it and in terms of sheer user volume it is without question the most popular and widely used browser for Windows. With lawsuits previously filed against Microsoft for pre-installing Internet Explorer on Windows based machines the tide was turning for other open source developers and independent companies to target the browser market. The most famous lawsuit was United States Vs Microsoft which claimed that Microsoft was unfairly restricting the browser market by including IE with every Intel based windows machine. Consumers though did have a choice and when they became more savvy at what was available to them the tide started to change.
Firefox was facing an uphill struggle when it launched against a dominant opponent in Microsoft but they had a secret weapon which would help them to grow into a successful and increasingly popular choice for consumers and more significantly the SEO industry, netting nearly a quarter of internet users and providing the browser in more than 70 languages. The advantage they had was the Firefox add-on tools and the ability to adapt third party tools into the browser and these are actually used today by more than 150 million people for customisation of their browsing experience. For the SEO industry Firefox became the obvious choice due to the ability to use specific add -on tools that were created by the industry, for the industry.
The compatibility of Firefox with SEO add-on tools is irreplaceable and daily we use these functions to help us do our job more efficiently. Third party developers continually create new tools to apply to the browser which simply are not available for Internet Explorer users.
SEO Tools
Some of these popular tools include “Firebug” which is ideal for breaking down various elements of a site including the html code and the css and allow you to view these elements easily, which is most valuable when performing internal SEO work and bringing an existing site up to standard.
Other useful tools include the Live Page Rank (although this is not exclusive to Firefox now) and the Web Developer tool, which helps to easily and quickly identify image ALT text, link titles and a Java disable option. There are also more complete all-in-one toolbars that can be installed such as the SEO Book toolbar which is a comprehensive plug-in which enables you to look at website strength, inbound links, indexed pages and cache dates, as well as being able to compare up to 5 sites against each other, allowing an easy method of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of those chosen sites.
There are many, many more plug-ins available that offer numerous advantages to anybody performing SEO and recently more third party developers have branched out into creation for other browsers but crucially, most of the tools being created are still not compatible with Internet Explorer with developers actually favouring Firefox and more recently Google`s excellent Chrome browser.
In the future more iterations of browsers are sure to enter the mainstream and utilise these additional plug-ins as they try to gain consumer favour but Firefox will always be remembered for being the first truly adaptable browser for the Windows system that was open to innovation for various industries. Time will tell which browser will be preferred by users for SEO but at the moment, all trends seem to point at Firefox with increasing numbers using it every day and with them being the internet browser equivalent of the ever popular Kings Of Leon, their fox truly is on fire.
November 12th, 2010
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this – I think from a marketing perspective, the Firefox phenomenon is a really interesting case history in penetrating a monopoly market.
I adopted FF ages ago and did it because it wasn’t IE! Seriously though the tabbed browsing was appealing and a real advance in usability.
All the rest is history as they say – I do find it rather bloated and it hangs and crashes occasionally but its a small price to pay for the functionality.
Thanks
Matt