Get FREE 411 Directory Assistance with GOOG411

Welcome Karl!
It’s great to see you here!
And thanks for the heads-up…great post!
~Linda~
Love your site by the way!

Thank you for the kind words Linda! And I loved the comment you left on http://www.askTheAdmin.com it’s going in the next AtA PR Kit!

Great post Karl. Keep up the good work. The Goog411 line has been spreading around my office pretty deeply, people are starting to use this service. I’ll be sure to send them this way for some enlightenment.

Great post Karl!! It’s great that you’ve joined makeuseof.com. Now I am getting more and more of my great time savers and kewl apps, ideas and software all in one spot. Great website by the way. Lookin forward to reading whatcha got to say!!

Welcome!!

Just a heads up for our German readers - I tried accessing Google SMS through their German page - http://www.google.com/intl/de_de/mobile/index.html - it seems that Google SMS in Germany operates differently from other countries. In Germany, you have to navigate to the Google SMS page on your mobile phone and click on a link you see there!

Doesn’t this kind of defeat the whole purpose of Google SMS? If you had an internet connection on your phone, why would you need to use Google SMS?

So don’t do this unless you have a special plan with the phone company to surf the web on your phone! Personally if I access the web on my phone, it costs the equivalent of $2 a minute!

Congrats on your first MUO article. GOOG411 is awesome, it saved me tons of cash. Not sure about other services though, never tried them.

Thanks Brainiac the whole MUO crew is great! I feel right at home here

Hi all - I’d just like to stand up for 1-800-Free411 here. We’ve actually got two key advantages over Google: 1) business, residential and government listings (as opposed to just business); 2) live operator support in most locations (google doesn’t offer this to my knowledge). Why not give both a try and see for yourself?

Hi Paul,

I have tried both and I prefer Goog411. My main reason was your service did not understand me most of the time (maybe due to background noise) but Goog411 got it right almost every time. I would be willing to give it another go - any tips?

As for residential and live operator support - most of the time this is NOT what I need. I need business information and quickly.

Karl L. Gechlik
http://www.askTheAdmin.com

I prefer 1-800-INFO-FAST cause it has LIVE OPERATORS and it’s FREE!!!! Try it!!!!!

that’s 1-800-463-6327

The operators are friendly and are based out of Idaho not India

They offer business, residential, and government listings, and they’ll connect you to any business for free!!!

I see lots of reference to the GOOG-411 service, which is cool. But I also wanted to point out that there are a growing number of free directory assistance services. There are probably about 8 of them out there now. They offer a variety of features. All except for the one I just read above utilize quite a bit of speech recognition and automation. Some don’t offer operators at all; others offer operator back up in some places; others offer operator back-up on every call, in case automation can’t find the caller’s request. Some play audio ads; some change the listings they’ll offer you based on payment from businesses; some do not play any audio ads; some offer SMS ads. Some are better at targeting the ads to what you’re actually looking for than others. Some offer mostly on ads that can be played on all calls, regardless of what you’re looking for. Some offer call completion on some calls; others do not offer completion. Some focus on business requests, while others allow you to ask for all types of numbers (business, government, or people). Most offer “category” searches (similar to looking in your yellow pages for a listing by category) as well as more traditional directory assistance searches where you know exactly what you want, but just need the phone number for that specific person or business.

So far, my favorite is 1-800-YellowPages (1-800-935-5697). I think the automation is pretty cool, but I also love the fact that I can always reach an operator when I need one. I have used both the traditional directory assistance search and also the category search. Both have worked well for me. I mostly use this service when I’m out and about - rarely from home. I’ll keep trying all of them, because with more competition, they will all need pay attention to being the best at finding what I want as fast as possible - and I am SURE that there will be some really creative, cool new things offered on a bunch of them over time.

Which free directory assistance phone services have you tried and what things do you like best about each? Do you have more than one free directory assistance service in your mobile phone address book?

Personally I preferred 800free411 myself. I like the residential feature as I have so much trouble remembering that stuff. I also never experienced speech recognition problems, maybe it was the background noise for that other guy.

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hey guys…. if you are really after free 411 that does business as well as residential numbers.. y’all should try this… dial 1-800-411 7283….it works!!!! fast and friendly operators..go ahead!!! you have nothing to lose…