Dear, sweet discovery! I just rediscovered the aptly named Wonder Wheel by Google and thought this time to share it. Imagine it like 6-degrees of search terms and you’ll be close. Discovering new-to-you stuff is fun and why fuss with 300,000 search results, a hundred different look-what-I-found sites and start playing again! Using the Wonder Wheel is as easy as point and click, the only thing missing are light-up toys that sing…

I’m using IE8 with a Toolbar that knows I have a Gmail account even when I’m not signed in. I don’t know if not having any or all of the above will affect your results.

Type in a Search Term that’s loosely descriptive of what you’re seeking. Don’t type New York Yankees, type Popular Sports, or Past Times. When viewing the results, look to the top-left. Do you see Web +Show Options… ? Click the plus sign to reveal a left-hand column of sorting and viewing options.

After All Results, Any Time and All Results again should be Standard View in bold. Below it is, “Wonder Wheel.” Click it and your ride of discovery begins.

A search for Japanese Film Directors resulted in the discovery of a New York based Japanese Film Festival that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard about. And what better reason to drive off to NYC than to read subtitles and enjoy great dining and New York itself?

The Search Results from Google are compressed, to the right and always refreshed to display results concurrent with your Wonder Wheel voyage. Sadly, there is a lot of repetition in the results and I haven’t figured out how to, “smarten” the Wonder Wheel queries to really blow my mind but I’m sure it’s in the openess of the initial Search Term.

The Wonder Wheel differs from the Related Searches by trying to offer up really great tangents. They still run nearly side by side with your wandering around but manage to introduce you to new ideas while Related Searches just alters some of the words in your initial Search.

It’s almost like a really drunk conversation where the Wonder Wheel might be heard to say, “I don’t know, connecting ‘glass vases to Admiral Chester Nimitz’ made sense in my head.” (True Wonder Wheel stream!) Have fun.