A few facts about the Google Toolbar

As a person trying to promote your website, the Google Toolbar can be your friend and your enemy at the same time.

Here are some things to be conscious of.

Google Toolbar is your friend

• Auto Complete. Helps you auto-complete your search queries by showing you popular queries as you type. This helps you see where a lot of people end up going by following Google’s help. It would probably be a good idea for your site to appear under those searches!
• PageRank. Shows how important Google thinks a given web page is. If you don’t have a score appearing for your website, you should probably be concerned.

Google Toolbar is your enemy

• Dirty Spies! If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you should be wary that Google is watching you. If you’re spending a lot of time going to SEO tips sites, Google has probably flagged you as a Search Marketer (which sometimes they consider spammers).
• PageRank. Yes, this is listed under the enemy section as well. The score shown here is at best 3 months behind at any given time and doesn’t necessarily reflect what Google really thinks about your site. So if you have a fairly new site or page, you probably won’t have a score. Also, Google engineers sometimes manually edit this score if they suspect that it’s run by a Search Marketer (which sometimes they consider spammers… see a theme?).

A good rule of thumb is to always keep in mind Google’s intentions with their free products. When you’re using a Google product, you’re paying them by providing them information. Be safe out there, little ones!