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 Goog [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Voice Search

Chitika has just published some very interesting data about voice search on the iPhone. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that about 25 percent of queries on Android devices are voice-initiated. That's an unexpectedly large percentage. By comparison Chitika's research director Dan Ruby said that he found about 7 percent of Google searches on the iPhone are voice searches. Interestingly he also said that voice searches are "three times more likely to be looking for local results" than searches on Google's browser site or text-entered queries on the Google iPhone app. Here's the compar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

Google announced they are discontinuing 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice activated local search service they launched in 2007. The service will go offline on November 12, 2010. Google said they offer many smart phone search options now, including voice search, voice input and voice actions. Google promised to put "all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages." Wow, "all" might be a bit of an exaggeration? I don't believe this will impact search by SMS. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Voice Search

Life just got a little easier for U.S.-based smartphone users running Android 2.2 (Froyo). During a press event this morning, Google announced "Voice Actions," a series of commands that lets users speak tasks that typically require typing. Danny Sullivan was at the event and live-blogged it here on SEL, and now there's more information from Google's blog. Voice Actions automates a variety of common smartphone tasks. By speaking a command, users can do general web searches or local searches, look up maps, get navigation, send emails or texts, and many more things. This Google video shows man [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

Google's having an impromptu small press "gathering" today at its offices in San Francisco. Topic? "Cool new mobile features." Want to know more? Stay tuned, as I'll be live blogging the event that begins at 10am. This is all we know so far: We’ll be unveiling a couple of cool new mobile features at the event, and Google mobile product management director Hugo Barra will be on hand to help demonstrate the features and answer your questions. There's plenty of speculation you'll find over at Techmeme. Well know soon enough. Coverage begins below at 10am Pacific. And we're off. Mike Nel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Google leaps language barrier with translator phone from The Times Online reports Google is working on a new tool that would bring instant translation to people. It appears that Google is a couple years away from this coming but they would build on their existing Google Translate and Google Voice features to create an instant translator. You would speak to it in any language, Google would then convert that and spit it back in the language of choice. Google Voice, Google Mobile search and similar products already take use of speech to text services. Google Translate already has some langu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Translate | Google: Voice Search

Google announced that it had released voice search for Mandarin Chinese for Nokia S60 phones. This is potentially huge -- if Google gets it right -- because of the massive population in China. It could also drive more search usage and frequency. Google trails Baidu on the PC but mobile represents an opportunity for Google to grow share in that largest of all internet markets. Google now says it understands a range of English accents, and Mandarin although it doesn't yet get all accents in Mandarin. In addition, the capability will be coming soon to the Android and iPhone platforms in China. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Outside US | Google: Voice Search

The Google Voice Blog announced that you can now use your existing phone number, with limited features, with Google Voice. Technically, I believe this is not considered porting your phone number, but it does allow you to use your existing number with Google Voice. Google has created a nice chart showing the difference in features between using a Google Voice number or using your own number with Google Voice: If you decide to use your existing number, make sure to read the FAQs and help documents carefully. Here is a video showing the various features you get with using your existin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Voice Search

A new report finds that mobile search and answers service ChaCha beat Google and Yahoo's voice search tools in terms of overall accuracy and reliability across a range of query types in a controlled study. The study was conducted by Albright Communications/MSearchGroove in January of this year. The report, which can be downloaded from the ChaCha site, was sponsored by ChaCha but the authors said, "While ChaCha sponsored the study, it was fully removed from the planning, testing, analysis, and reporting of this work." The methodology was very specific and relatively elaborate. I summarize it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Microsoft: Bing 411 | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Yahoo: Mobile & Go

Android OS phone users can now use Google's voice search tool inside of Google Maps. According to today's announcement, the tool recognizes English-language speakers with American, Australian, and British accents. There are other improvements, too: Transit and walking directions are available for more than 250 cities Business listings have been upgraded to include store hours, prices, and ratings/reviews Google Latitude had a location detection bug that's been fixed A new "Updates" feature in Google Latitude makes it easier to communicate with friends This update isn't an autom [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Voice Search

MobileCrunch noticed Yahoo has added voice search capabilities to their Yahoo One Search iPhone App. I spent a few minutes testing it out and I have to say, that is does an okay job. I didn't conduct enough tests to really compare it against Google's iPhone voice search feature. They are both different in how they work. First let me show you Yahoo's voice search for a test on [who is barry schwartz]: Step 1: Click on the "Press + Speak" button to activate voice search: Step 2: Speak when button turns red and then tap it again when you are done talking: Step 3: The button [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice | Yahoo: Mobile & Go | Yahoo: Search

Google has announced the addition of voice search and My Location on the Google Mobile App for Blackberry. The new Blackberry additions are features that have been available on the Google Mobile App for iPhone since November. The My Location feature lets you search without needing to input a city name or some other geographic modifier. Voice search is what it sounds like -- a way to search by speaking your query. Google had offered voice search as a separate download for its Google Maps Blackberry app last summer. They launched the Google Mobile App for Blackberry this past September. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice

The Google Mobile Blog announced that the Google Mobile iPhone App, now with voice search, is finally live as an update in the iTunes App store. So I downloaded this morning and decided to offer you a video demonstration of how it works. Before showing you that, let me link you to some of the coverage we have seen so far. Matt Cutts of Google has not only one, but two useful posts demonstrating the features. Waxy shows the behind the scenes on how it works. Plus you can see more coverage at Techmeme. Without further ado, here is my video, demonstrating how it runs on my iPhone. Hope [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Yesterday, arguably the top tech story of the day was Google's introduction of voice search for its iPhone app. As of this morning, the updated app still isn't available in the iTunes store (that's not Google's fault). I spoke yesterday afternoon with Google's Mike Cohen and Gummi Hafsteinsson about the app and how it would work. What they described was something that sounded qualitatively different in terms of accuracy and usability vs. competitive offerings now in the market. Unfortunately, no one has had an opportunity to try the updated app yet. But, if it works as promised, it should [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

The New York Times reports in Friday's newspaper that Google's iPhone app will be updated with voice search capability. The move should come as no surprise: The launch of Goog411 in 2007 brought immediate speculation that mobile voice search was on the way, and Google tells the Times that data collection from the Goog411 project helped create this new iPhone service. With the new Google iPhone app, you'll be able to speak your search query into the phone rather than having to type it out. The Times article explains what happens after you ask your question: "The sound is converted to a digi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice | Top News

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 h [...]

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

Today Google announced a download that enables voice search for Google Maps on Blackberry devices. This is very much like the existing Windows Live Search for Mobile service with voice or Tellme for Blackberry devices (also Microsoft). Yahoo also recently integrated Vlingo's speech technology into oneSearch. It's reportedly built on the same speech recognition engine as Goog411. Right now it's only available for Blackberry devices as part of a Google Maps download. I'm sure it will be expanded for all phones that can run the Google Maps application. Speech recognition and voice search are i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Voice Search

The Google Blog announced that GOOG-411, Google's voice enabled search service, is now out of beta. To use GOOG-411 just dial 1-800-466-4411 (aka 800-GOOG-411) and listen to the voice prompts. As part of a promotion for GOOG-411 leaving beta, Google said they will unveil which Googler is the voice behind GOOG-411. Here is the video that announces GOOG-411's graduation from Google Labs: Google launched GOOG-411 back on April 6, 2007. And Greg Sterling had a nice post named Goog411 Voice Search and Speech Recognition. You can read our archives for more on Google Voice Search, plus checko [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Labs | Google: Voice Search

I'm in the Bay Area this week, and driving down Lombard Street, I brought the car to a halt when I saw the two billboards above. Yes, that's one of the Goog411 billboards for Google Voice Search sitting on top of an Ask.com "The Algorithm" one. Sadly, there's doesn't seem to be room to squeeze in ones from Yahoo and Microsoft. Want to see them for yourself? Go down Lombard, just up from Gough. I've got another shot here, as well. [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Promotions | Channel: Industry | Google: Marketing | Google: Voice Search

Last week's coverage of Google's Goog-411 billboard in Olean brought forth a number of other sightings of the billboards in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, Ca. & Tonawanda , Buffalo and Limestone (even smaller than Olean) NY. While there may be others yet to appear and more billboards coming from Google, the very specific geographic clustering of the billboards in Western New York and the greater San Francisco area speak against Valleywag's speculation that the boards were surplus from a Google experiment in brokering billboards. While Google may very well be interested in the bil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Marketing | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search