What are Google Wonder Wheels?
Google has introduced a number of new ways to limit and to display the results of searches, some of which may help people expand or focus a topic to search. One new display method is called “Wonder Wheel.” Other new display options include “Timeline” and “Related searches.” Limits include types of sites, like “Blogs,” “Updates,” and “Discussions,” as well as time period limits such as “Past 24 hours” and “Specific Date Range.” Here are directions for getting to and utilizing them:
- Do a Google search
- In the light green bar under the search box, click on “+Show options”
- Scroll down to see all of the limiting and display options in the left column.
Here are a couple of examples.
Wonder Wheel
- Click on “Wonder Wheel,” the 2d link under “Standard View” to see your search words in a circle, with lines radiating out from it to other links that are related to your search words—e.g., Wonder Wheel results for a search for “information literacy” shows links to “media literacy,” “computer literacy,” “deep web,” “information literacy lesson plans,” etc.
- If you click on one of these links, you get another Wonder Wheel with links radiating out from those search words.
- wonder wheel example
Timeline
- Clicking on this link in the left column, under “Wonder Wheel” provide a graphical display in the form of a bar graph, and listing below that what Google considers to be key results for specific years.
- It looks like this begins with the first spike in the timeline. It’s hard to know what the timeline really refers to, as it goes back to 1900 and through to the present.
- timeline example