Google Voice Search Adds Personalization

Traditional search on Google is already personalized (and has been for some time), and now the company has announced that its Voice Search service can also be personalized. With personalized voice search, Google will use recordings of your voice search to “build a speech model” that’s tied to your Google account. In doing so, Google […]

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Traditional search on Google is already personalized (and has been for some time), and now the company has announced that its Voice Search service can also be personalized.

With personalized voice search, Google will use recordings of your voice search to “build a speech model” that’s tied to your Google account. In doing so, Google says it can do a better job of speech recognition and improve search results, accordingly. “Although subtle, accuracy improvements begin fairly quickly and will build over time,” Google says.

Personalized voice recognition shows up as a new option in the Google voice search options screen. There’s an element of creepiness in a product that records your voice and ties those recorded searches to your Google account, and today’s announcement takes pains to mention that the voice recognition service can be turned on or off at any time.

The new feature is currently only available to English speakers in the US, but Google says it plans to add support for more countries and languages in the future. To use personalized voice search, users must have Android 2.2 and download the latest version of the Voice Search app.


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About the author

Matt McGee
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Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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