LinkExtend

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on December 14, 2009

LinkExtend is a Firefox toolbar that displays a wide variety of information about the Web sites you visit. Whether you're trying to protect your computer from malicious programs or your children from inappropriate content, LinkExtend can help you stay safe on the Web.

The toolbar's interface is intuitive, with well-labeled icons for the program's functions. An online Help file does a good job of describing LinkExtend's features. The toolbar displays each Web site's rankings in terms of security, child safety, and company ethics, as well as Google PageRank and SiteTraffic. You can view your browsing history and see a list of similar Web sites. The program has its own search box as well as the ability to search a wide variety of preselected Web sites organized into different categories based on keywords or phrases. The only aspect of the toolbar that disappointed us was the ethics rating. We visited a wide variety of Web sites while using LinkExtend, and the company ethics rating came back as "unknown" for every single one, even when we visited the sites of businesses known to be major ethical offenders. Otherwise, we liked the toolbar and felt it was a valuable addition to Firefox. More than once we've surfed our way onto suspicious Web sites and wished for a quick and easy way to determine the level and nature of the risk they pose, and LinkExtend definitely solves that problem.

LinkExtend is free. It installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program to all users.