Wondering where WonderWheel went?

Of all of Google’s post-search refinement features, WonderWheel has been my personal favorite.

It’s the kind of feature that my high school students need no real pushing to use.  They see the immediate value of being able to break a large or vague topic into subcategories and immediately see their results shift as they click on the dynamically developing mind map.

My love story is described in this post from May 2009.

It seems when Google introduced its very nice Google Instant Search, it kinda hid the even nicer WonderWheel.   I am having trouble coping with this trade-off.

But, here’s how to get it back.

• After you start your search, to the right of your search box, you will see a pull down menu under “Instant is off.”
• Select “Off. Press Enter to search.”
• You will then see  Timeline, and WonderWheel in the left navigation bar.
• Click on More for the other wonderful hidden search refinements.