Mind Maps and Wonder Wheels
Google never ceases to amaze me, but what is more amazing is how Google’s most powerful tools are often just the other side of inconspicuous-looking doorways. How many searchers do you suppose ever click on the “show options” tab on their search results? The number might be many, but compared to the entire Google audience, I’m willing to wager that it is a fraction of 1%. When people search, their eyes go immediately to the results, or back up to the top of the page where they can narrow their search to images, news, retail products, or more.
But if you are interested in how search engines work and how to create a website that is attractive to search engine spiders, Google’s new Wonder Wheel provides an interesting and dynamic view of the semantic relationships between websites and various related search terms.
The Wonder Wheel is a dynamically generated mind map where you can see two nodes and their connecting lines at any one time, plus a breadcrumb trail that shows you the path back to where you started. Mind maps are wonderful things because they organize information by relationships rather than hierarchies. By doing so, they may show results that are important to you, but might not have occurred to you as a search criteria.
Play with the Wonder Wheel for a little while and you start to see how the entire web is semantically connected. With a semantic map of the entire web, you could trace multiple paths from any one topic to any other. The Wonder Wheel isn’t complete, though. Some terms are simply dead-ends. “Urban Dwellers”, for instance, will not generate a wonder wheel. Nor will “Urban Streets”.
I was surprised by the prevalence of three and four word keyword phrases. The semantic engine seems to favor these far more than two word keyword phrases. We will continue evaluating Google’s Wonder Wheel at Keller Crescent Advertising to see what secrets it may reveal, but for now, why not try Google’s Wonder Wheel for yourself? Plug in the name “Kevin Bacon” and see how many steps it takes to reach Steve Jobs. I made it in 34 steps.
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