There are a lot of data on the web that can help us surf the internet more efficiently. The extensions listed below help us achieve this. Some extensions collect data from the users and summarize them, some analyze user-generated content, while others record the history of web pages. SEO oriented extensions are excluded from this list.
1. Alexa Traffic Rank
This extension shows the global website traffic ranking of the current website as well as the ranking in the country that generates the most traffic for this website. This is the quickest way to learn about a website’s popularity and credibility. Moreover, it shows websites that are similar to the current one with remarkable validity. This enables a graph based traversal of the internet. The Wayback Machine link allows the user to view old versions of the main page of the current website. To view old versions of any web page, there is a dedicated extension listed below at #9.
Upon clicking on the main link, it shows the traffic distribution overtime, by country, subdomain, gender, education, and browsing location. Traffic data is collected mainly through the Alexa Toolbar and this extension.
Number of users: 550,000
Alternatives: SimilarWeb with better graphics but less reliable traffic rankings.
2. timeStats
This extension records web page visits and their durations from the user and organizes them in nice graphs to summarize the user’s internet usage. Data can be grouped by month, days of the week, and user defined categories. It also displays the most visited domains and busiest days. It will greatly help you understand how you spend your time on the internet.
Number of users: 80,000
3. History Trends Unlimited
This extension complements #2 timeStats by recording and graphing your web page visits without considering the duration. It can also plot the data by time of day and year.
Number of users: 14,000
4. Web of Trust
This extension checks the current website for security and child safety calculated based on user feedback. Websites are categorized into safe, suspicious, and unsafe with the extension icon as well as an optional icon next to every link that shows up in any web page and search results. With over one million users, this extension provides reputation results for almost every website you visit.
Number of users: 1,500,000
Alternative: #1 Alexa Traffic Rank provides traffic rankings that are as powerful as user-submitted reputation. You just need to know how high the ranking needs to be to make a website too popular to be insecure which differs by the type of website.
5. Keepa
Keepa is an Amazon price tracker that embeds price history charts in Amazon product pages. You can set up price drop alerts with a specified threshold. The new Data tab shows historical data about trade-in and sales rank as well as the categories the product belongs to. You can change the default view to a Keepa button to save space on the product page and increase loading speed.
There are many other price trackers for other shopping websites but many of them are in web format without a Chrome extension.
Number of users: 600,000
Alternative: The Camalizer does the same thing in a pop-up from the address bar. It is less flexible in settings but shows more price history than Keepa (which sometimes fails to show any) when a product has many subtypes.
6. Fakespot
This extension analyzes Amazon product reviews for their authenticity using advanced language processing techniques and shows the estimated percentage of authentic reviews and an adjusted rating. The product company is also assigned an aggregated review grade. The free version provides a button that takes you to the analysis page while the paid version automatically shows the ratings on Amazon product pages and below product links.
With so many incentivized reviews popping up on Amazon since 2016 in products of smaller and foreign brands, this young extension is becoming increasingly important.
Number of users: 43,000
7. Ratings Preview for YouTube
This extension adds a thin bar below each video thumbnail to show the ratings for the video so you can know the like to dislike ratio before clicking on the video.
Number of users: 120,000
8. Google Similar Pages
This extension shows web pages similar to your current web page. In contrast to #1 Alexa Traffic Rank’s similar sites function, specific web pages instead of main pages are shown. This extension puts more consideration on the similarity between web pages rather than the similarity and matching of popularity between websites. On less popular web pages, it takes a longer time to show results or no results are shown at all.
Number of users: 170,000.
Alternative: Similarsites
9. Wayback Machine
This extension provides an easy way to archive the current web page or view older versions of the web page stored on archive.org. You can view web pages saved since 1996.
Number of users: 30,000
Alternative: #1 Alexa Traffic Rank enables the user to view older versions of only the main page of the current website.
MicroExploitation, MacroExploration 