Last month when Google released Wonder Wheel I was very impressed as were my students that tried it out. Wonder Wheel makes it easy for students to try alternative search terms and get search results that they might not otherwise find. Today, Google unveiled Google Squared which could also improve students’ chances of find relevant search results.

Google Squared displays the results of a search in a spreadsheet format. This spreadsheet format allows users to quickly compare the results of a search. Users can alter the fields in the spreadsheet to further refine a search. For example, I searched using the term “US Civil War,” the results were displayed in a spreadsheet containing the columns “image,” “description,” “date,” and “result.” I then eliminated the “result” column and replaced it with “location.” The new “location” column displayed results based on location.

A short video introduction to Google Squared is embedded below.

Applications for Education
Like Wonder Wheel, Google Squared presents students with a good tool for altering and refining Internet searches. Tools like these help students get beyond the first page of Google results and into links that they might not otherwise explore.

Here are some related resources that may be of interest to you:
Google Wonder Wheel in Action
Refine Google Searches With Cloudlet
Scoopler – Search Delicious, Digg, Twitter, and Flickr