Open the Tools tab and click any listed item. Each one opens an external validator or utility with the current page’s URL already filled in, so you’re not copying and pasting URLs between tabs by hand.
What’s actually in this tab #
Everything else in the SEO Action Plan extension runs its own checks locally, inside your browser. The Tools tab is the exception: it’s a curated list of links out to external services that do a specific job better than a browser extension reasonably can, things like a real Lighthouse run or a malware scan. Instead of remembering the URL for each one and typing your page’s address into it, the tab builds the link for you.
What’s on the list #
- View Page Source: opens the raw HTML of the current page in a new tab.
- PageSpeed Insights: runs Google’s own performance, accessibility, best-practices, and SEO audit against the page.
- Rich Results Test: checks the page’s structured data against Google’s actual rich-result eligibility rules.
- Schema Markup Validator: a general schema.org validator, separate from Google’s own tool.
- Classy Schema Visualizer: renders a page’s structured data as a readable diagram instead of raw JSON.
- Wayback Machine: shows the page’s archive history on web.archive.org.
- Google Safe Browsing: checks whether Google has flagged the site for malware or phishing.
- Sucuri SiteCheck: an independent malware and blacklist scan.
- Semrush Overview: opens the domain’s traffic and ranking overview on Semrush.
- Moz Link Explorer: opens the domain’s backlink profile on Moz.
- Facebook Sharing Debugger: shows how the page’s Open Graph tags render and lets you force Facebook to re-scrape them.
- X/Twitter Card Validator: Twitter’s own card preview and validation tool.
Getting a fresh result instead of a cached one #
Some of these tools, particularly the schema validators, cache what they last saw for a given URL. If you’ve just fixed something and want to confirm it, a cached result can make it look like nothing changed. The Tools tab has a cache-bypass checkbox for this: turn it on and every link gets a timestamp appended to its URL, so the request looks new to the tool instead of returning a stale copy. It’s off by default and only changes the link, not the actual page.
Why use these instead of just the built-in tabs #
The SEO, Schema, and Performance tabs give you a fast read on a page without leaving the pop-up, which is enough for most day-to-day checks. The Tools tab is there for the cases where you want an outside, independently run second opinion, a real Lighthouse score from Google’s own servers rather than a browser-measured estimate, or a malware check that has nothing to do with on-page SEO at all. Keep both in your routine: the built-in tabs for quick checks, the Tools tab for verification, and edge cases. See the SEO Tools feature page for more on this, and right-click shortcuts for a faster way to reach some of these same tools.
Common questions #
No. The other tabs (SEO, Schema, Performance, and so on) run their checks locally inside the extension. The Tools tab is different: it’s a set of shortcuts to external, independently run tools and validators, useful when you want a second opinion or a check that the extension doesn’t do itself.
No. Every link on the Tools tab is prebuilt with the current page’s URL already encoded, so clicking a tool opens it ready to go.
Some of these external validators cache results for a URL. Turning on the cache-bypass checkbox appends a timestamp to the URL before opening the tool, so the request looks new to the validator instead of returning a stale, previously cached result.