Dayn W Creative

If you haven’t yet clicked “Show Options” in the upper left of a search result page on Google, go ahead and do it now. Be prepared to lose an hour exploring the new ways to shake the Google search results tree.

One of the quirky, yet instant friends you’ll make from the Google options sidebar is the Wonder Wheel. Like a wagon wheel with your search term as a hub, Google graphically suggests related search terms at the end of spokes off of your hub. Clicking a spoke term launches a new wheel based off that term, but still leaves your original wheel visible. As you’re busy exploring the spokes, ‘classic’ list style results are being updated in the right column for the current search term.

I’m not sure how many times this process can repeat, but I tested it out to 6 levels, starting with “cycling pants” (which I need for winter commuting) and eventually ending at “surly cross check” (the bike I commute on).

The top feature of the Google Wheel for actually trying to locate information has to be search history. One of the hardest parts about traveling down the search rabbit hole is remembering how you got to the term you just searched for. The Google Wheel makes it easy to see your tunneling path, and you can visually hop back to any wheel you’ve spun off.

Building a keyword list, but not sure what people might be searching for? The Google Wheel can be seeded with a search phrase to see what other phrases are commonly searched related to that phrase. Keep poking at it, and it’s easy to see how this will quickly become an invaluable tool for keyword list makers.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Google auto suggests good keyword phrases for keyword list building

For a real quick and dirty method of building a keyword list, I just use Google’s handy auto suggest.

As you know, Google.com helpfully tries to guess what you’re searching for as you type, even going as far as telling you how many results there are for that phrase. So toss one of the more general keywords relevant to your subject in there, and Google will suggest other phases that are usually related. If the phrase comes up in the auto suggest, you can bet people are searching for it. If it’s a relevant suggestion, it gets added to my keyword list. Poor boy’s list keyword phrase builder.

Popularity: 65% [?]