I remembe
r my baby steps into the crazy world of SEO here at R.O.I. Media. I came in with some fairly decent writing experience but keywords were something I had never used while working at newspapers and magazines. They preferred straight facts, swear words or pictures of women dressed in an extremely casual dress code.
Although these are not necessarily boring, it was exciting for me to venture into uncharted territory. It was time for me to understand, and possibly master, the thing that my mom calls: “The Google”.
It was a slow process at first, with more tech jargon than I had ever heard in my life, but slowly I started to understand the bigger picture. In my early days, one of the guys in the SEO department gave me a gift I’ll always remember. It was a simple link, but it opened up a whole new world of possibility – it was the Google Wonder Wheel. “What is it?” I said with gleaming wide eyes and my hair flapping in the breeze – which was caused by his face being too close to the top of my head while breathing heavily. “It’s the wonder wheel…” he said plainly, with a patronising look in his eyes. “Put your keywords in, and you can see what Google spiders deem to be associated with that phrase.” So, I did just that – AND IT WAS GLORIOUS!
From that day forward, the Wonder Wheel provided a few relished moments of entertainment every week – as I went from serious keywords to ridiculous phrases just to see what the outcome would be. That was until the start of this month, when my fun ride disappeared. Yes, Google continues to improve its overall awesomeness, and Google+ is just one of the new toys that this search behemoth has provided me – for free. But their official announcement that the Wonder Wheel had been taken offline, and failure to comment on whether it would ever return, made me a little sad. I can’t help the urge to want to give it a spin… JUST ONE LAST TIME! Unfortunately, this may never be possible.
I have written this article so that people of the future never forget this noble online tool – as nowadays we are too quick to forget where things started due to the way new technology is constantly progressing. We get distracted too easily and never give something the respect it… ooooh, Google+ has a -1 button. Nice!
