The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: September 2007, Volume 6, Issue 9
The Emerging Role of Speech in Search
by Josh Nannen, Search Marketing Consultant, iProspect
Today, search is synonymous with change as the industry continues to evolve with new
offerings emerging every day. With that said, a recently re-branded search engine and
a “me-too” offering from Google have some interesting implications for the future of
search marketing. Both leverage speech-recognition technology — software that allows
machines to understand ordinary speech and/or respond accurately to spoken commands —
yet each is a very different search offering.
Search of Speech
EveryZing — previously known as Podzinger — is a
search engine that employs speech-recognition technology (from its parent company BBN)
to make audio and video files as indexable and searchable as conventional text-based
Web pages. Perform a search on this engine, and the results will include podcasts
and videos with snippets that contain information related to your query.
This offering provides marketers with another avenue to extend the reach of your
digital assets. Uploading your media to EveryZing’s database is fairly simple,
following a brief registration process. EveryZing can currently process English and
Spanish media, and allows upload through a variety of formats. It is likely that
EveryZing URLs will show up in Google Universal and Ask 3-D blended search results,
offering yet another user path to your content.
In addition, smart marketers interested in taking advantage of an emerging opportunity
may want to test contextual advertising on EveryZing
(AdWords and www.everyzing.com/advertising Program.jsp). At the time this
article was written, EveryZing incorporates Google AdSense ads into search results
pages. They also indicate that they will begin serving contextually relevant ads
prior to the playback of audio and video content this fall.
Speech-driven Local Search
In the past couple of years, a number of companies have launched free automated
directory assistance services. The value proposition is simple: Why pay a telephone
company $2.00 for a single 411 call when you can make it for free? Well, there’s a
catch. In at least one case (1-800-FREE-411), the caller must listen to a
(usually irrelevant) 12-second message from a sponsor prior to accessing any
information.
However, this past spring, Google introduced GOOG-411 (1-800-GOOG-411) as their
service in this space, and has indicated that they are actually collecting voice
samples from the calls to build their own database for speech recognition purposes.
Much like Google’s visual interface, the user experience with GOOG-411 is simple,
uncluttered, and efficient. It also greatly differs from other free directory
assistance offerings. First of all, you don’t need a specific name — your inquiry
can be very general, like “Mexican Restaurant.” With such broad-based query
capabilities, the service generates a list of results, and allows the user to
scroll through them, and even get additional information. And as of today, no
advertising has been incorporated into the service.
To ensure that current and future “phone searchers” can find you, search marketers
should make sure that your business locations are accurately represented in
Google Maps, since that is where GOOG-411 pulls all results.
In addition, search marketers would be wise to become an early adopter of contextual
paid search opportunities associated with GOOG-411-related programs and technology
(and those from other similar services) as they emerge. Will Google incorporate “Audio
AdWords” (AudWords?) that are relevant to GOOG-411 users’ local queries into this
product? That should be an easy addition. Google also may use their growing speech
database to help place contextually relevant ads within and around video and audio
content in browsers.
Ultimately, search marketers should begin to consider the role of keyword research
in audio/speech content. With Google Universal allowing video media to occupy search
positions previously reserved for conventional Web pages, it would make sense to
incorporate keyword research intelligence into all types of media, not just your
website.
Overall, smart marketers who are creative with these new offerings will not only be
in the vanguard of a nascent form of search marketing, they’ll also likely be
rewarded by seeing their content occupying more positions in blended search results,
such as those of Google Universal.
