SEOquake Chrome extension: what it shows, how to set it up, and the checks it is best at

SEOquake is a free SEO browser extension from Semrush, available for Chrome and other major browsers. It does three things well: it overlays metrics on each result in a search results page so you can size up a competitive landscape without opening tabs, it gives you a one click on page report for whatever page you are viewing, and it lets you export a results page to a spreadsheet. It is a reconnaissance tool rather than an audit platform, and used for that it is one of the fastest things in a search marketer browser.

What you get after installing it

The SEO bar on search results

Once enabled, each result on a search results page carries a short row of metrics underneath it. You choose which metrics appear, so set this up on day one and remove everything you do not use, because a cluttered bar is slower to read than no bar. The useful selection for most people is a domain level strength indicator, an estimate of referring domains or links, and the age or index information you care about.

The page report

Click the extension icon on any page and you get the on page summary: the title and its length, the meta description, the heading structure, the image count and how many images lack alt text, canonical and robots directives, the internal and external link counts, and whether a sitemap and robots.txt are reachable. This is the fastest way to answer what is wrong with this page at a glance, on a competitor page as easily as your own.

The keyword density report

It counts single words and phrases on the page. Treat the output as a vocabulary check rather than a target: read it to see what the page is visibly about and which obvious topic words are missing, and ignore any temptation to tune a density percentage. Density targets have not been a useful optimisation for many years.

The diagnosis panel

A checklist of common on page and technical items with a pass or warning against each. It is a prompt list, not a verdict. Work through the warnings and decide which matter for the page in front of you.

The SERP overlay and export

The results page can be exported to a CSV with the ranking URLs and the metrics shown. For competitive research this is the feature that saves the most time: one search, one export, and you have the landscape for a query in a spreadsheet you can sort.

Compare URLs and domains

Put several domains side by side on the metrics you have selected. Useful for a first pass on a competitor set before you commit any paid tool credits to them.

Set it up properly once

• Trim the metric list. Keep three or four metrics in the SEO bar. Everything else is noise you read past.
• Turn the SERP overlay off by default if you also use the browser for ordinary searching, and switch it on when you are working. It keeps normal browsing fast.
• Set the country and search engine you research in, so your readings come from the right index.
• Decide where it runs. Disable it on internal tools and web applications where an extension reading the page is unnecessary.
• Know what it sends. Like any extension that annotates pages, it reads the page you are on. Review the permissions it asks for and keep extensions to the ones you actually use.

Three workflows it is genuinely fastest at

Workflow	How to run it	Time
Size up a query	Search the query, read the SEO bar across the top ten, export to CSV, sort by the strength metric	Two minutes
Reverse engineer a competitor page	Open the ranking page, run the page report, read the headings and the title, note what they cover that you do not	Five minutes per page
Spot check your own page before publishing	Run the page report on staging or live, check title length, description, one H1, alt text count, canonical and robots	One minute

How to read the metrics without misleading yourself

• Every third party domain metric is an estimate from that vendor index. Use them to rank a list, not to make a single decision about a single site.
• Compare within one tool. Mixing a score from one vendor with a score from another in the same column produces a nonsense ranking.
• A strong domain metric with little visible traffic is a pattern worth noticing when you are assessing a site for a link.
• Your own positions are not what the overlay shows you. An extension reads the results page you were served, with your location and history in play, so take ranking readings with a properly configured checker or from Search Console.

Where to go when the extension runs out

SEOquake is excellent at a single page and a single results page. Move to a crawler when you need to check a whole site, to a log analyser when crawl budget matters, to Search Console for anything about your own performance, and to a tracking tool when you need history. The extension is the first thirty seconds of research, not the audit.

This page covers the browser extension. For the categories of audit tool and what each one actually inspects, see SEO audit tools and SEO checker tools. For the Semrush platform reports themselves, see Semrush SEO analysis. For the full site level checklist, see the technical SEO checklist.

Where people get stuck on SEOquake Chrome extension

Is SEOquake free?

The extension is free to install and use. Some of the data it surfaces links through to Semrush, where deeper reports sit behind an account, so the extension is best understood as free reconnaissance with a paid platform behind it.

Does SEOquake slow down Chrome?

Any extension that annotates pages adds work to page rendering. Keep the SERP overlay off when you are not researching, trim the metric list, and disable it on sites where you do not need it. Done once, it stays quick.

Is it available outside Chrome?

Yes, it is published for the major browsers. The panels and settings are the same, so a workflow you learn in one carries over.

Can I trust the keyword density report?

Read it as a vocabulary snapshot of what the page is about, and use it to spot missing topic words. Do not optimise toward a percentage; write for coverage of the subject instead.

What is the single best use of it?

Exporting a results page to CSV with the metrics attached. It turns a competitive landscape into a sortable table in under two minutes, which is a job every other route does more slowly.

Numbers the toolbar cannot show you

SEOquake puts rank, backlinks and indexed pages in one strip above the results. It reads the results page, and a buyer who asks an assistant never sees that strip. The assistant writes its own answer and names its own favourites.

The workflow here is simple. Search the query in Google with the extension on, then ask the same question in Perplexity and ChatGPT and put the two lists side by side. Where they disagree is where your attention should go. AI Knows Us keeps that second list over time, across assistants, so the comparison does not depend on your memory.