Google is introducing an Elections Search Gadget that allows users to search transcripts of political speeches and videos that appear on YouTube candidate channels.

The speech recognition technology (also shared with Goog411) produces a transcript of the videos, which can then searched by users of the Gadget to find precise phrases or keywords in speeches or candidate statements on particular issues.

Google is doing this to test out the speech-to-text capability, which it will probably expand more broadly to YouTube videos as a whole and to Google video once the technology is improved and hits certain milestones.

Separately, Google is showcasing 3D technology (in the context of a Radiohead music video) that is intriguing and probably has considerable application in Google Earth/Maps, and perhaps even its new virtual world, Lively.

Postscript: Labnol reports that Google has named this “Audio Indexing” on 9/15/08.

Related Topics: Google: Earth | Google: Voice Search | Google: YouTube & Video

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling