RockMelt: Ad Free Google Search From Toolbar

I’ve been using the new RockMelt browser since late last night, but this is not a review. I’m merely interested in pointing out that users can search the toolbar (as with Safari or Firefox) and get Google results — but they’re ad free in this case. There’s no SERP with ads, just a list of organic Google results (see below).

RockMelt is the “Facebook browser” built on Chromium, the open-source basis for Google’s Chrome browser. Accordingly it’s really similar to Chrome in almost every way but it has Facebook and Twitter pretty deeply integrated into the experience. I’m liking it more than I expected, but again I don’t want this to be a review.

If you plug “Boston Hotels” into the Firefox toolbar, you get a page that looks like this:

If you enter the same query in the RockMelt address bar (just like Chrome proper) it yields the exact same page as the one above.

But this is what it looks like if you enter the “Boston Hotels” query in the RockMelt toobar:

Only the organic results appear in the list. If you click one it goes right to the associated site. The SERP with ads is entirely skipped.

It’s not like RockMelt poses any threat to existing browsers at this point or that Google is going to be in any way affected by this, even at the outer margins. I thought, however, it was interesting.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.