What web browser should an online marketer use?

What web browser should die hard internet marketers who earn their income online (or who are starting to) use? Which will grow with you, do everything you need and not leave you high and dry when it comes down to business?

First off, over the last year, I’ve tried the following and given them all equal opportunity as my full time web browser.

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Chrome
• Safari

Why I love Internet Explorer, But Didn’t Choose It.

I love it, because I have to. When "Mr. First Time PC Owner" opens the box to their first machine, they see this shiney blue "E" on the desktop or start menu. These newbies don’t know any better, and rarely know how harmful or harmless entering their credit card is or buying or subscribing and their anxious to try everything. Internet explorer is still the most widley used so, it’s the browser I glance at every site with to check to make sure it works, and all my precious buy-now’s work!

Why It’s not my daily browser. You’ll be hard pressed to find reviews that don’t say "crashes", or "Slow" or similar. Viruses still find their way in easier, and it still doesn’t pack the features other browsers do.

Why I Love Safari, but don’t use it.

The day Mac Safari was ported to Windows was a day I’ll never forget. I literally installed it on every machine I owned. It was exciting! It was faster than any browser I’d ever used (yes, at the time even Chrome). It had this set of curtains kinda thing with all my favorite sites on it, and I loved the look & feel…

But while it did load some sites FAST, other features were slow and half the best plugins that make internet marketing a walk in the park DONT work on Safari, at least not yet…

I think every marketer will agree with my suggestion. The winner is Firefox hands down.

Why I Keep Chrome, Even With it’s Faults

Chrome has some definite growing pains going on. Being it’s first year (couple weeks ago ), It still has tons of features that make me say "Damn it! Why’d I use chrome again!" but I’m still using it… Why?

Chrome is definitely fast, but without easily being able to install all the browser plugins that make SEO & online marketing easier, it’s simply not useful as your "general browsing" browser. It also doesn’t have the "recently closed tabs" feature which means if you close something it’s hard to find! It’s bookmarks folders often crash when you’ve got a ton and a serious internet marketer has hundreds of bookmarks. Aint that right?

Why keep using it? Good question! Managing multiple Gmail accounts, or multiple adwords accounts, webmaster centrals, analytics etc… Using Firefox & Chrome I can have both open. In fact, the homepage for my Chrome browser is my analytics. Ironically, I’ll bet Google properties never have problems with Chrome because they’ve built both and probably test those sites first.

Why Firefox Is THE BEST Online Marketer Browser

• It works on Linux, Mac or Windows regardless of operating system.
• SEO Plugins are everywhere
• SEO Toolbars
• Link Diagnosis Plugins
• Bookmark Syncing & Backup (Laptop/Desktop/Office)
• Remebers recently closed tabs if you need to go back to something.
• Saves your tabs if you crash.
• View Google results in different countries
• Check your rankings with firefox
• Check your Google Analytics with firefox!
• Find out if they are who they say they are with FlagFox (says where a server is located)
• Save entire websites completely with this Plugin
• Build macros for repetitive tasks in Firefox
• And more!

I’m going to leave it right there for now, but there’s probably some strong reasons why folks choose one vs the other. My personal reasons are here.

(Update: Sept 25th – P.S. I forgot how many popups there were on the internet until I started running Internet Exploder(explorer again.
I felt it only fair to run it for a few days before writing this – sure wish I hadn’t!)

All The Best
Daniel J Deyette