Its removal was a surprise to all its users including the many K-12 educators. A Google spokesperson old us that Wonder Wheel was removed due to the ”initial stage” of the Google website redesign but did not share any info when we asked if and/or when Wonder Wheel would return.

Now, let’s jump to the other day when I came across (by accident) a Google Help Forum post by a Google employee that was posted only two days after our Search Engine Land item. It provides a different explanation than Google gave us originally.

The Googler, who uses the handle drussell+u2u, does not mention the redesign but says that Wonder Wheel was technically a ”headache” to maintain. Wonder Wheel, at least as we’ve known it to this point will not be back. However, the employee adds that, “we’re hoping to be back with a real improvement sometime soon.”

Wonder wheel has been problematic for some time now (maintenance of the system is a headache). The idea is a great one, so we’re looking into ways to improve the main idea while creating an even better user experience. Hang in there, the ability to explore the space of related searches is a good one, and we’re hoping to be back with a real improvement sometime soon.

​​Our story appeared after Wonder Wheel was removed but an official announcement from the Googleplex was not made. It also came about a month after we learned that Google’s Uncle Sam government search vertical (and a few other verticals) were also taken offline without letting users know. In that case, Google apologized for not communicating more clearly.

The spokesperson said that the search tool was removed due to the “initial stage” of the Google site redesign announced earlier this week.

The Google Wonder Wheel along with a number of other search refinements were formally introduced at the 2009 Searchology event but actually became available as part of a test a couple of months earlier.

Wonder Wheel was used by SEOs, SEMs, and advertisers as a way to visually identify relationships between a search term(s) and related searches using the Google database. As you moved from one set of terms to another results would change.

It could help this user group discover related keywords and ideas to explore for possible purchase as AdWords or for further exploration.

Another group of users who also used Wonder Wheel for keyword discovery and to spot relationships and new concepts were educators, librarians, and students.

For example, a librarian might use it to help a user find new words to search with not only with but also using other databases. A teacher or student might use Wonder Wheel to identify ideas for a research project.

Will Wonder Wheel be back and available soon? Google didn’t provide a timeline or commit one way or another if it will or will not be available in the future.

A quick review of the Google Help Forums shows that at other times Wonder Wheel was inaccessible to users for various amounts of time.

So, stay tuned for updates.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago we wrote about Google taking several verticals offline. We learned then that Google failed to let users know about the change but then quickly admitted to the error and publicly apologized.

As we said then and will say again now, taking a service offline is up to the company. Users are free to go elsewhere or share their opinions with Google. What we hope for is simply for the company to let users know what’s going on versus waiting around, speculating, and wasting time.

Related Articles:

• The Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Refinement Features Get Live Test
• Google Begins Multi-Month User Experience Update
• Meet The New Google Look & Its Colorful, Useful “Search Options” Column
• Google Searchology 2009: The Big Recap

Meet Rich Search Assist

The screenshot below shows an example of this:

As you type, Yahoo suggests search topics using its preexisting Yahoo Search Assist service. But now, next to the suggestions, Yahoo flashes up a closer look at the first result you’d get for each topic. As you move down through the other suggestions, the preview changes to match those.

The short video below (it’s about 15 seconds) shows this in action. I shot this of Yahoo Rich Search assist running on a Yahoo corporate laptop, so please forgive that it’s not a high-quality screencast:

Now In Testing With Select Users

Shashi Seth, senior vice president of Yahoo Search products, told me about 5% of Yahoo’s users are currently being opted-in to the new experience and that Yahoo is also testing various versions of it.

Testing will likely continue for a month or two until a final product is rolled out to the public, Seth said. Later this week, Yahoo plans a blog post with more details about the service.

Postscript: Yahoo has a post up now about it here.

Ads Covered, Said Has No Impact

Unlike Google Instant, Yahoo’s version of results previews covers up its ads. Seth told me that so far, this has been “revenue neutral” — ad income isn’t impacted. He also also said that “user engagement and happiness” has gone up.

I was a bit confused about this. If engagement is up, that should mean that people are selecting more from the preview box shown and not going the actual result page — which contain ads. So, there should be a drop.

Alternatively, people might be engaging with the preview box, then ultimately ignoring what’s there and closing it, heading to the results the “old fashioned” way. If so, then the previews wouldn’t seem successful.

We’ll all have a better idea when we can actually see and play with the service ourselves.

Instant & Previews & Assist, Oh My!

It’s worth clarifying that Yahoo Rich Search Assist is like Google Instant but NOT like the recently launched Google Instant Previews (which do cover ads and which Google also says doesn’t cause a major impact).

To recap:

• Google Instant: Launched in September, shows previews of results as you type
• Google Instant Previews: Launched in November, shows previews of pages listed in results, if you deliberately chose to see them
• Yahoo Rich Search Assist: Now being tested, shows previews of results as you type

About That Name

As for the name, Yahoo Rich Search Assist, it’s a mouthful. I asked why Yahoo didn’t just call it Yahoo Instant, and Seth smiled. That’s because Yahoo did have a Yahoo Instant search product back in 2005, before Google had its Google Instant that came out this year. Since everyone’s going to call this Yahoo Instant anyway, I think Yahoo should resurrect the name.

By the way, I asked if Yahoo was working on Yahoo Rich Search Assist before or after Google announced Google Instant. Before, I was told.

Finally, looking today, I noticed that somewhere along the way, the old format of how Yahoo’s regular Search Assist worked seems to have ended. You used to get a drop-down box with various suggestions listed horizontally. Now, the suggestions are all listed vertically.

Learning More

You can learn more about how Search Assist used to work, as well as more about other things mentioned in this article, via our past coverage below:

• Search Suggestions On Steroids: Yahoo Search Assist
• Yahoo Upgrades Search Experience, Launches Search Assist & Multimedia Content In Results
• Google Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide
• Yahoo Had Instant Search In 2005 & Dropped It; Bing Kind Of Has It Now
• Google Launches Instant Previews

It’s all described in this Yahoo blog post, complete with screenshots showing how users can begin their search by using a “handwriting panel” next to the search button.

Yahoo says that’s the Chinese language character for the first letter of Lady Gaga’s name. To the left of what the user has drawn, Yahoo shows six possible character matches. And once the searcher indicates which character s/he drew, Yahoo then shows 10 suggested searches.

Yahoo says this feature should make it easier for searchers who typically type their queries in Chinese, but the feature also accepts handwritten queries in English. Here are the results of me using the writing panel with the letter “s.”

You’ll need the latest version of Adobe’s Flash Player for this writing panel to work. Yahoo says the technology supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, and numbers.

Here is his video:

The internet was buzzing about this feature over the weekend. I personally find this to be just a bit overboard. It makes the page jump around, I feel it can lead to confusion and other issues.

Google sent TechCrunch a confirmation, calling this one of their many “search experiments.” Google said:

At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments. You can learn more on our blog.

It seems most people are not too eager to see this in the search results anytime soon.

Searches for some queries that combine a race/nationality and the word “are” are no longer showing any Google search suggestions. You can see below that typing “muslims are” into Google’s search box shows suggestions until the word “are” appears.

The same thing happens on phrases like “jews are,” “americans are,” “christians are,” and “african americans are.”

When asked about the disabled search suggestions, a Google spokesperson quoted some of what’s explained on the help page about Google Suggest:

The search queries that you see as part of Google Suggest are a reflection of the search activity of all web users. While we always strive to neutrally and objectively reflect the diversity of content on the web (some good, some objectionable), we also apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech.

We don’t know how many nationalities/races are affected by this, nor when it began, but some still have their search suggestions active with the word “are.” I quickly found these two examples:

Earlier this year, the phrase “islam is” stopped showing search suggestions, too. Google told us that was a technical bug, and that search does, in fact, show search suggestions now. As you can see, most of those suggestions are negative.

The suggestions for “christianity is” and similar phrases are also highly unfavorable, which suggests that Google is saying its hate speech policy applies to individuals (i.e., “muslims are”) but not to entities (i.e., “islam is”).

(via Search Engine Roundtable)

Queries from your search history will appear in purple, while other queries will show in blue. The auto-suggest box offers options like “Manage History” and “History Off” for searchers who don’t this feature enabled.

You have to be signed in to your Google account and have Web History enabled for this to work.

Mike Blumenthal raises the good point that having actual personalization in Google Maps would be a bigger improvement.

So, for example, start typing “orange county” into Bing and the autosuggest feature will show a couple terms related to today’s extreme weather.

Bing hopes to improve some of the 45% of queries that it says “result in either a user conducting an immediate re-query, or abandoning the page altogether.”

But this is somewhat of a catch-up move, at least where Google is concerned. Do the same search on Google.com, and you’ll also get suggestions related to today’s weather.

Yahoo’s suggestions don’t take today’s news into account, however — even when you fully type “orange county.”

“…our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were, and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improved the search results, we had only one truly bad synonym.”

Google shares an example of a bad synonym: substituting “pc” as a synonym for “precision” in a search query like [dell system speaker driver precision 360].

Google also says it’s changing how synonyms are displayed in search results: Rather than only bolding direct variants of words (like “photos” for “pictures”), Google has “extended this to words that our algorithms very confidently think mean the same thing, even if they are spelled nothing like the original term.”

On his personal blog, Matt Cutts follows up the official post with some words of advice for webmasters:

“Think about the different words that searchers might use when looking for your content. Don’t just use technical terms–think about real-world terms and slang that users will type. For example, if you’re talking about a “usb drive,” some people might call it a flash drive or a thumb drive.”

The official post also mentions that users can turn off synonyms by putting a plug sign (+) before a word in your query, or by putting the query in quotation marks.

Not mentioned in either post is that you can use the tilde symbol (~) to force Google to show additional synonyms (and related words) for your query. For example, a search for [~murder statistics] leads Google to bold words like “crime,” “crime statistics,” “suicide statistics,” “criminal,” and more.