Google's New Wonder Wheel Feature: Bad SEO

By now, perchance you’ve heard of Google’s new Wonder Wheel experiment. It looks like that thing YouTube tried for a couple weeks, where each video linked to related videos by using a little interactive zoomy thing. It didn’t last long.

Obviously, the Google Wonder Wheel uses Flash, so it’s pretty bad SEO. No telling how Google plans to get its Wonder Wheel to show up on search result pages for crucial keyphrases like wheel experiments without using lots of good text about experimenting with wonder.

How will the Wonder Wheel affect search marketing? Obviously, to ride the wheel high, we’ll all want to pepper our useful and authoritative content with a little wheel-optimized text. Like so…

A wheel is a circular device that rotates on its axis, facilitating movement while supporting a load or performing labor in machines. Common examples are found in transport applications. A wheel, together with an axle, overcomes friction by facilitating motion by rolling. For wheels to rotate, a momentum needs to be applied to the wheel about its axis, either by gravity or application of another external force. More generally the term is used for other circular objects that rotate, such as a ship’s wheel, steering wheel, or flywheel.

Don’t ride solo, Engineers—you’re gonna want to get in the HOV lane ‘cause here comes the traffic!