Google Toolbar For Firefox Adds Chrome-Like “Most Visited Sites” Tab

Jan 29, 2009 at 5:30pm ET by Danny Sullivan

One of the key features of Google Chrome is how it will list the sites you regularly visit on your home page when the browser starts. Now Google has brought that to Firefox, via the latest Google Toolbar update now available.

With the update, if you open a new blank tab in Firefox, the sites you visit most often will be listed.

Of course, not everyone will like having all the sites they regularly visit showing up this way. I find it annoying in Chrome that this cannot be disabled. But Google tells me this can be disabled using the Google Toolbar’s Settings option. And if you clear your Firefox history, that also clears what’s used for creating the tabs. You’re also supposed to be able to individually prevent certain sites from showing.

Official news on the change is coming from Google shortly, but some people are already seeing the toolbar with the new functionality, as Google Blogoscoped notes. However, when I’ve downloaded the toolbar, I’ve yet to get it work for me. I’m checking further on this.

Postscript: Figured it out. I kept downloading the non-beta version of the toolbar. The functionality is only in Google Toolbar For Firefox 5 Beta. I also do NOT see a way to disable the new feature there.

Postscript 2: To remove a particular site, use the “Edit thumbnails” link at the bottom of the “Most visited” tab that appears. To disable the feature entirely, click on the Wrench icon in the toolbar, then the Search tab, then the section called “Web-browsing tools” and then untick “Enable the Google new tab page.”

Postscript 3: Google’s now blogged about the new feature.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

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