Posted by Julian
Posted on 06-25-2008 under Development, SEO

Here are some thoughts on usability optimizing for the new Firefox 3 address bar.  It may seem a bit frivolous to worry about optimizing for the Firefox 3 address bar, however I tend to look at everything and try and at least understand it, and know how to leverage it.  So this is my take on the new Firefox 3 history address bar.

Firefox 3 has been out for a little over a week now.  With its launch brings beautiful things like fast javascript rendering, better tabbing, and a history based address bar that uses keywords in the URLS and Page Titles to show 5 recent sites you have visited.  In a quick survey of 6 co-workers (myself included) I was the only one who was actively using the address bar in the keyword way.  Two others had started toying with it, and the other 3 had just noticed.  Like most things, with time people will learn the system, so it’s valuable to learn it now.

Factors that contribute to the selection of which pages to show.

Keywords do not have to be next to each other. For example, I type “fryewiles admin”

Multi-word searches must have both words matched. (above only 4 pages were returned.)

Keywords do NOT need to be fully matched. (not that arch landed the word “search” in above listing.

Listing is keyword based if the word typed in appears at least once it will be “selected” and then put in chronological  order.

Both the page title and the page URL are used for finding keywords.

Visually improve your sites display.

Use a catchy Favicon.

Note in the example that Sphinn.com, although it may have the least “cool” looking Favicon (sorry Sphinn) it is the most eye catching in the small setting.  The green really pops off of the white background well.  It is also fairly large and simple.  It is worth noting that the Yahoo icon is the most heavily branded (still not used to the new Google favicon)  So I’d say Yahoo is a close runner up in this instance.

You only need the word to appear once in the title.

Your listing position in the 6 is based on history visit time, not on density/count.

Branding sits well at the start of the title.

The decision of brand name placement is a tough one when setting up titles.  If you are a brand heavy site you tend to stick the brand up front.  This is good for search engines and as the image above shows, good for the address bar as well.  This also helps with tabbed browsing.

Short Url’s reduce the clutter.

If you have a fairly short URL, then it will let your longer page titles stand out a bit more.

Why and when would you use this?

Well it’s important to know all this stuff, but beyond the knowledge importance are a few places that you could implement this.  For instance, If you have a site that people visit regularly, you could include keywords such as Google, main, yahoo, myspace, facebook, tube. This is a bit shady and odd, but hey, it’s up to you.

One reason you would want to have you site popping up is for brand re-enforcement.  For instance, because of the URL and they are usually in the last 6 sites with the word SEO.  SEOmoz.com as a website will be in my address bar.

Well that was fun.  I always love dissecting a new aspect of what we do. Cheers.