Friday, March 27, 2009

Google Rolling Out "Wonder Wheel" and Other Search Additions [Search]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/fFkS_NP0vc4/google-rolling-out-wonder-wheel-and-other-search-additions

Google search has been on a roll lately, and today brings yet another addition—an "options" panel that switches your results to reviews, forum posts, recent items and a timeline, and even a nifty "Wonder Wheel."

Only a certain percentage of Google users will see the "Show Options" link in their blue Google bar at the moment, but the Google Blogoscoped blog has a bit of cookie-adding JavaScript anyone can use to get opted into the "experiment." Once you do, you'll see the view options pictured at right, giving you all kinds of new views on your search results. Most intriguing are the "Reviews" sorter, which uses Google's algorithms and ranking to weed out the opinions and ratings, the "Recent" sorter to show the latest web items, and the Wonder Wheel, pictured up top, that lets you chain-click around a topic to find a lot of related material.

Check out Google Blogoscoped's screencast of the latest Google features below, and hit the link farther down for the cookie add-in trick: