Linkify: the best bookmarklet you’re not using

If you blog, you should get the Linkify bookmarklet that Laurence Gonsalves wrote.

How does it work? It’s an easy 2 step process:
1. Drag the Linkify bookmarket to your personal toolbar.
2. Dang! There is no step 2! Sorry about that. I, um, got mixed up. There’s just one step.

Now how do you use it? Well, see the link I made to Laurence Gonsalves? To do that, I wrote the words “Laurence Gonsalves,” selected that text, and clicked the “Linkify” bookmarklet. Here’s what you see:

Linkify bookmarklet

Up pops a frame on the right-hand side of your browser with search results from Google (this is powered via Google’s AJAX search). You mouse over the result links to see which one you want, and when you find the answer you want, click “create link”. The selected text will turn into a hyperlink.

It’s that easy. If you’ve noticed that I’ve had a few more links in my last few posts, it’s because Linkify reduces the annoyance of making a hyperlink.

Thanks to Laurence (who happens to be a Googler) for writing this handy tool. Hat tip to Ionut Alex. Chitu for mentioning this bookmarklet. And thanks to Danny Sullivan for jogging my memory that I wanted to write about this.

Disclaimer: This bookmarklet works great for me on Firefox 2. If it doesn’t work for you on your browser, sorry to show you a glimpse of joy that doesn’t work for you.

20 Responses to Linkify: the best bookmarklet you’re not using (Leave a comment)

  1. Pretty cool Matt and works as advertised. Think there’s any chance Laurence could be persuaded to make work if you select any text on a page (instead of just from a comment field) or perhaps even from text selected in Performancing?

    Even if not it still looks very useful.

  2. Yah, cool, that way you can create more links easily. Just one tip:
    Be careful with the link text, as it should describe the page you are linking to as best as possible to make good keywords for it.

  3. That’s why I always use Crest for whiter teeth and fresher breath πŸ™‚

  4. wow, i like that “toy” :p thanks!

  5. Wow, that’s great! Thanks for puttin it up there. Will go nicely in my nucleus blog, I finally got around to setting up fancy URLs to help it out a bit. Can’t wait to throw it up there.

  6. Yeah nice addon Matt! And very wonderfully advertised. πŸ™‚

    Manish Pandey

  7. Linkify Γ¨ fantastico! πŸ˜€

  8. Steven Bradley, strangely enough that was exactly the feature that I wanted the most too. If I see Laurence, I’ll mention it, but he might read the blog before I see him, so I’ll agree here as well. πŸ™‚

  9. Good stuff Matt — thanks for the tip and the shout out. πŸ™‚

  10. I am thinking of using it.

    But I don’t think I really need it.

  11. >> I am thinking of using it. But I don’t think I really need it.

    It’s not a question of need. Simply put, if it saves you time and hassle (both!) then why *wouldn’t* you use it?

  12. Manish Pandey, thanks. πŸ™‚

  13. Testing.

  14. Great tools mate I have place two of them on http://car-news-reviews.blogspot.com/ if anyone wants to take a look

    thanks

    Matt Waterman

  15. nice tool..not sure i wanna use it. scared it wil slow my pc that is already suffering from old age haha

  16. Cool … is it like snap.com preview ??? Or much better ?

    Thanks for da tip

  17. How is this Tree Result done?

    Type in “Broadspeed” in google

    can you tell me how the site broadspeed has a tree under their results?

    thanks

    Matt

  18. >>… is it like snap.com preview ??? Or much better ?

    Sounds good, but if it has anything to do with Snap, I wouldn’t even try it cause I’ve had a bad experience with snap.

  19. A nice tool. But i won’t use it.
    There are too much tools and this fact makes me crasy.
    It’s time to think over on “tools aggregator” πŸ™‚

  20. Oh, wow. Cool. Is anyone interested in Mozilla Ubiquity for Firefox?

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