SEO for Firefox - Now With SEO X-ray

We recently added an SEO X-ray feature to SEO for Firefox. You must use Firefox 3.0 or above to see these features, but if you want to see...

  • how the on page optimization of any page looks (headings, meta description, page title)
  • the keyword density of the page and popular phrases on the page
  • how many links point into a page (total links, or links from external resources)
  • how many links point out of a page (as well as the anchor text of these links, nofollow vs follow, internal vs external - all exportable in CSV format)

then this new feature makes it quick and easy to do all of that. Simply right click on the page you are viewing, scroll down to SEO for Firefox, and click on SEO X-ray.

That will show you an overlay on the screen like this

We are planning on doing another update in the next couple days, and may add...

  • the IP address of the site (and links to other sites on the same IP address)
  • character and word counts for page title and meta description body content
  • a link to the domain tools overview page for the associated site

If you are using Firefox 3 and SEO for Firefox please give this a try and let us know what you think.

Published: October 28, 2008 by Aaron Wall in seo tools

Comments

justinnerd
October 28, 2008 - 10:34pm

Thanks for the update Aaron! Looks really good so far. I'm off to test it some more.

Petro
October 28, 2008 - 10:52pm

Hey there Aaron ;)

What about featuring also a Nofollow link count, possibly splitted up between internal/external?

I used to have a plugin to do that (not splitting BTW), but it no longer works in FF3... this would be the feature that would make me click on the "Install" button (again).

Great plugin indeed.

Yours,
Maurizio

October 29, 2008 - 12:57am

This is a topic the developer and I were debating on...we were not sure if it would be better to add more of that information directly in the interface and have it a bit more cluttered, or having it available in a single downloadable file. Looks like you are voting for putting it in the interface directly then, eh?

After he works through adding a few other things we will probably look into this area again and try to add more of this information directly to the box.

Thanks for the feedback Maurizio!

Dave Dugdale
October 28, 2008 - 11:41pm

I just downloaded it and it works nice. I think I will use this instead of Search Status plugin.

yet another ben
October 29, 2008 - 12:00am

Do the SEO profile queries load faster for anyone else?

I like how it helps build the link profile of the websites that are linking to a site. I recently wrote a post on the neighbourhood of your neighbours...which is hammered home by the presence of this tool.

Great tool for free - thanks!

Ben M

SamKnoll
October 29, 2008 - 2:21pm

Aaron,

Thank you for making a great tool even better.

This FF plugin is one of the ones I am featuring in a in a new series of Competitive Intelligence reports I have coming out shortly.

Most folks are not aware of the power you hand them with this. Let's hope they do use it for Good.

Thanks again,

Sam

October 29, 2008 - 4:16pm

Glad you like it Sam. Thanks for the kind words and the mention! :)

Jeff Preston
October 29, 2008 - 7:36pm

Great tool. Thanks for adding this. I did notice that if you run it on a Flash site that is embedded in JavaScript that the results display under the Flash.

Other than that great tool!

Thanks!

Priscilla
October 30, 2008 - 10:46am

I really cant wait to share this with my workmates.

Thanks

sozo
November 3, 2008 - 5:11pm

Awesome as always, Aaron. Thanks!

Brandon H
November 3, 2008 - 10:37pm

Great improvement on this tool... but how do I turn it off once it's started on a page?

November 4, 2008 - 12:41am

the lower right corner of the gray shadow box has a link that says "close".

Chrisga
November 4, 2008 - 2:19pm

I'm not saying... I'm just saying, your updates are more than impressive.

Javid
November 6, 2008 - 8:33am

Thank you Aaron wall. I have been using your tool for long and it really helped me a lot. This update which i installed doesn't work for me it just brings up a black screen in front of the page but nothing in it.Please help me fix this. Is that any other add on causing this problem? Just can't figure out.

November 6, 2008 - 8:46am

There are over 100,000 installs, so odds are that there is some conflicting extension or something. can you try uninstalling and reinstalling seo for firefox and see if that helps you out?

Javid
November 6, 2008 - 9:38am

That's a very quick reply wow!

I uninstalled and reinstalled the add on but still I'm having the same problem.I'm having fire fox 3.03. Any more suggestions.

nikoska
November 6, 2008 - 2:45pm

Aaron i have a similar issue with Javid. However the black screen doesn't show up at all. It goes directly to the webpage with the overlay data, that i have selected, from the tool (headers, alt, links etc.). I have just installed Firefox 3.0.3 on Windows

November 6, 2008 - 6:24pm

could you guys maybe do a screen capture of the experience and upload it to youtube?

Javid
November 8, 2008 - 12:04pm

Hello Aaron

I have uploaded a screen capture of this problem here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF1UNICpc_c

Hope helpful

November 8, 2008 - 12:13pm

Did the issue happen only on pages with flash installed or on all pages? Do you have any other extensions installed?

Javid
November 8, 2008 - 2:00pm

The issue occurred on all pages regardless of flash installed or not.

Yes of course I have installed various extensions.

Javid
November 16, 2008 - 7:53am

Hi Aaron

Now i found that the seo for firefox xray feature works fine for me . I thought I should report it to you. Since I had no time, its been so delayed.
Once again, thank you for your quick help.

dnyce
November 6, 2008 - 9:58pm

Great, and I do mean Great!, Tool you've provided to the SEO community for free here Aaron.

You never cease to amaze.

christianbusch
November 7, 2008 - 8:31pm

Well done, Aaron! The X-ray is a really useful new feature!

November 8, 2008 - 3:07pm

Guys who have issues with Seo XRay, could you be more specific? Does it break on every page or on some particular pages? Could you give some examples where it breaks, what version of FireFox you use and what OS?

wnguyen
November 8, 2008 - 7:45pm

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the SEO rank checker tool. I've been using it for the past month without any issues. Recently, I installed the latest version of Firefox 3.03 and noticed that Rank Checker no longer reports any of the Google data although Yahoo information seems to be just fine. Any thoughts on how to fix this error? Any help would be useful as I've become highly dependent on the tool.

Thanks!

November 8, 2008 - 10:59pm

I am not sure what is causing that issue, as I am using 3.0.3 and it works on my computer whenever I test it.

bsheitman
November 18, 2008 - 1:43pm

The new seo x-ray feature wasn't working for me. It would just gray out the screen but would otherwise provide no data. Turns out if was conflicting with my Flashblock plug-in, disabled Flashblock and I'm golden. HTH.

Very nice addition.

harivney
November 29, 2008 - 6:33am

Great tools - thank you.

I checked a few websites that I know have external links
and each one showed external links in gray pop up.

But when I exported the list, there were no backlinks
in export.

In another cases where I did find links they don't come close to match the Y!page links given by SEO plugin

Using the latest versions of Firefox and SEO plugin.

PS - I did recognize that that the external link count in
xray omits external links from the same root domain.

Burmas Finest
December 15, 2008 - 10:30pm

This is a fantastic tool which I've been using very happily and successfully since it came out. It works on 99% of sites that I have come across. However, I've just started working for a new company and I can't for the life of me get it to work with our site: http://www.stockshifters.com

I was wondering, could there be some specific website code which is specific to our site which is causing SEO Xray to fail? When I say 'fail', the error is identical to those described above: screen is overlayed grey, h tags and links etc. are all highlighted, but the usual 'results' box that should float over the top of the page does not appear.

Is our site cursed with bad code? If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this I'd be really grateful.

Cheers,

Elliott

December 15, 2008 - 10:46pm

Hi Elliot
I am not sure what is causing that. Our programmer is working on another tool at the moment, but if you ping in about a month we might be able to dig in and try to fix whatever is causing that.

alkas
December 16, 2008 - 3:50am

I have updated the SEO for Firefox and yet I cannot see the SEO xray option when i right click it.. I have Firefox 2.0 version..

December 16, 2008 - 4:43am

Sorry but SEO Xray only works on Firefox 3. We could have put it in Firefox 2, but it would have looked a bit buggy...and then we would have been showered with complaints for that.

bob2009
January 16, 2009 - 5:26am

SEO Xray doesn't work if a website does not have a DNS record for domain.com. I mean if your website is www.domain.com, when you run SEO Xray and if there is no DNS record for domain.com (without the www), the initial dialoguebox itself doesn't load. Is this on design or a bug.

Bob

January 16, 2009 - 4:53pm

I see what you are saying Bob. I will highlight that to our programmer
cheers
a

terraestella
February 17, 2009 - 12:24pm

When I do an x-ray on this very page, I get the following results:

# of external links to this page: 118
# of internal links to this page: 14
# of links to this page: 131

And then below it says this:

External links: 9 / Internal links: 165 / Total: 174

Aaron, could you please explain these results. What is the difference between the first and the second listing?

Thank you for the help.

February 17, 2009 - 12:48pm

The top data is about links from other pages to this page. The bottom data is about the links on the page

terraestella
February 17, 2009 - 3:35pm

So, basically when trying to optimize my page to rank high in Google, I am interested in # of external links to this page, (these are all the backlinks the page has) - am I right about that?

February 17, 2009 - 4:22pm

Yup, at least for the most part. If you want a basic SEO primer read this SEO Knol. :)
http://knol.google.com/k/aaron-wall/seo-basics/38v8wakla8f98/2

terraestella
February 17, 2009 - 5:01pm

Thanx, Aaron.

ianlockwood
March 2, 2009 - 2:05pm

OK, whenever I do a search on google.co.uk (doesn't matter what search term), I get identical data for every entry (including Shopping results!):

No PR, Age: 05-1999, Y! gov links: 100, Y! Links: 7,450,000 etc.

The tool was working, no settings have been changed - any ideas what's going on?

Thanks,
Ian

March 2, 2009 - 4:19pm

Hi Ian
One of our members recently reported something like this...try logging in or out of Google and clearing the Google cookie and see if that fixes it for you.

angie toomsen
March 17, 2009 - 7:29pm

Aaron: Thanks for a great tool. Question. On one site of ours, the data is whited out. These data points in particular: all links to page #'s, WHOIS search link, stop word default list and the close button. We are wondering what causes this as we don't see this on any other sites. We are also having some SEO issues with this site and wondered (shot in the dark) if these are somehow related.

Any insight you have is appreciated!

Angie

March 17, 2009 - 8:39pm

It might be an issue with Flash Angie.

Roxbourne2
April 30, 2009 - 11:13am

Hello,

I have used the SEO X-ray tool for awhile now and it suddenly stopped working properly.

But I have figured out why and how to fix it.

It was due to a conflict with another add-on in Firefox.
I have Firefox 3.0.9 by the way.

The offending addon is "Interclue"

SEO X-ray will not work with Interclue enabled, you don't have to uninstall it - just turn it off - it's one of the options for it.

Hope this works for other people, if not try disabling some other likely offending/conflicting add-ons that you have added just before SEO X-ray stopped working properly.

Alexander Bullivant
http://www.roxbourne.com/search-engine-optimisation.html

Roxbourne2
May 7, 2009 - 2:52pm

The offending add on is definitely "Interclue" Ive double checked. Watch out for other addons conflicting - dont add too many as Firefox will eat your RAM and takes ages to start.

Alexander Bullivant
Roxbourne.com

GrowMap
May 10, 2009 - 9:57pm

Hi Aaron,

Would you consider writing a post comparing these three tools and letting those new to SEO know how they differ or are similar?

Arriving at your site it is not clear why there are three and whether we should choose between them or use them all. Only someone who uses them all is in a position to explain that simply for new users.

Creating a post like that and adding a link to it on the tools page would really help.

May 11, 2009 - 12:47am

Have you read all the instructions on the seo for firefox and the seo toolbar download pages? For what it is worth, I think most SEOs would benefit from installing both.

aat.webmaster
August 14, 2009 - 1:31pm

I like this tool features.

I will download today. And i this its help to my work very easily.

thanks for seo book.com

kevinmc3
October 31, 2009 - 5:34pm

Or maybe I am doing something wrong? I have been using this tool for a few years. But, I notice there are time when I DO NOT get the X-ray on the SERPs. I toggle the SEO Tool icon but like today I just cannot get the tool to work and provide an Xray of the sites.

October 31, 2009 - 6:44pm

You might want to uninstall and reinstall the extensions if you are having trouble with them.

dados101
February 25, 2010 - 10:01pm

great tool! thank you for providing this for free. i'll be telling others to download it as well.

lovrobanfic99
January 14, 2014 - 11:56am

I am using latest Firefox and when want to start Xray by right clicking nothing happens. Any ideas?

Peety
May 3, 2015 - 12:50pm

Using Firefox 37.0.2 and XRAY unfortunately ist not working. It did not work on v 35 either. Tried to switch off all other addons but not working either. Can you please help?

muchobrento
May 7, 2015 - 4:23am

I just installed XRay and it doesn't work. Clicking on the button in the toolbar does nothing. I use the tool at work all the time, but I just installed it on my home computer, and, well... nothing.

May 10, 2015 - 4:05pm

thanks for mentioning the problem you had with it.

sherrillh
September 7, 2016 - 7:28pm

I'm assuming it is due to the latest Firefox version. Probably one of my favorite time saver tools, hope it works again soon!

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