Google Wonder Wheel: Useful Keyword Research Tool?

I was just watching Matt Cutts’ video where he was recapping his PubCon speech from late last year. In it he highlights some of the neat tools Google has introduced recently for users and developers.

One feature that stood out to me as (possibly) being quite useful was the Wonder Wheel. This is the first time I’ve really paid it any attention, but I’ll be keen to see if it, as Matt suggests it will, be useful for Keyword Research.

(For those unfamiliar with this term, Keyword Research is the task of identifying words and phrases that could be useful for including on your website to attract search engine traffic. For a deeper explanation of Keyword Research, read this.)

I’ve not tested it yet, but you can find it easily. Just go to your Google homepage, and enter a term for the subject you want to research. For the purposes of illustration, I’ve chosen the phrase ‘bronze statues’.

(Please ignore the red fields with a fireball and the word ‘Keywords’ written on it – this is a plugin I use from SEOQuake. Please also ignore my amateurish use of MS Paint. I’m working to a deadline here, and want to post this so it doesn’t get forgotten by me.)

How to find the Google Wonder Wheel

You have to click on the ‘Show Options’ link, which opens out and then displays ‘Hide Options’ (circled at the top left of the picture above, in red). Then click on the ‘Wonder Wheel’ item down the menu (also circled in red). This will then display the Wonder Wheel, similar to the following screenshot.

Use the Google Wonder Wheel to generate keywords

You can see in this picture, that it opened the Wonder Wheel at the bottom, and I then clicked on the ‘spoked’ link, ‘Bronze Sculptures’. This opens up another, linked wheel.

As I said, I’m yet to test this in any thorough way, but it could be an additional useful tool for finding key words and phrases.

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