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Ham Radio Searches with Google’s Wonder Wheel

September 4, 2009

Here’s a way of reviewing ham radio information presented by Google in an innovative, graphic format.  The example I will use a search for a “ham radio antenna”.  That search from a standard Google search box looks like http://www.google.com/search?ie=UT-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ham+radio  Notice that I only searched for “ham radio” and not “ham radio antenna” – for demonstration purposes…   View the page it produces.  Notice that below the word “Google” on the search results page it should say “Web + Show options…”.

Now click either the + or the words “Show options…”.  The + should change to a – and the “Show options…” should change to “Hide options…”.  Below that, you should see along the left side of the page a number of Google links.    They are divided into four categories:

  • All results
  • Any time
  • Standard view and
  • Standard results

Below “Standard view” there is a link for “Wonder wheel”.  Click that on the actual Google search results page – not here.  You should see what looks like a wheel with “ham radio” printed in the center of it and spokes extending outward from it.  At the end of the spokes is another search term related to ham radio.  One of those is “ham radio antenna”.  Click THAT set of words and “ham radio antenna” becomes the center of a second circle with spokes with search terms related to IT…  for example, “ham radio antenna design” and “homemade ham radio antenna”.

This is a handy tool to let Google suggest sub topics of a particular search term.  It’s sort of like a hard coded menu structure, but I suspect this is much more dynamic – not requiring a human to hard code menu choices.

I saw this technique demonstrated when exploring some other information and, since I was going to be researching ham radio antennas I decided to give it a try.  I liked what I saw.  I hope you may find some uses for it.

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN-9 (-9 added for APRS purposes)

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.twitter.com/AB9NN

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