Google Introduces Video Audio Indexing to Labs

In their quest to make everything searchable, Google is now starting to index what is being spoken in video clips, or to be more precise, what is being spoken in YouTube clips. This is done by using speech recognition technology to convert the audio into words which is then indexed into Google search. Then if you want to find a particular video clip or if you want to find out if someone has mentioned a particular subject in a video clip, you can enter keywords into the search engine and be taken to those clips right away (if they exist of course). This is being called Google Audio Indexing.

That’s the theory anyway. Since GAI is a Labs product at the moment, everything is still a little rusty and doesn’t quite go 100% as planned. While I’m using it, I half-expect Beaker from Sesame Street to come out and go “meep-meep!!” at me! But it’s still a good product, you can see the vast potential in it and it won’t be long before it becomes completely perfect.

Right now, Google is limiting the search results to the US presidential elections. After the election is over, they should hopefully expand it to the rest of YouTube, provided the Audio Indexing service works as planned.

So to use the service, just go to the page and enter the search term you are looking for. Since it is just confined to the election right now, let’s say you are looking for the candidates’ position on gas prices. Just enter “gas prices” and hit enter. You’ll then get a list of YouTube videos where the words “gas prices” come up.

If you see one that fits your query, click on it and it will open up in the right hand side of the page.

Now, see those little yellow squares in the blue bar? They signify where your keyword is mentioned in the video and if you mouse over those squares, a little window pops up showing you the context of your keyword. You can use your mouse to click and jump directly to your keyword, instead of watching the whole video if you’re in a hurry or if you’re not inclined to listen to long windy speeches!

As you can also see, you can “search inside the video”. So you can make a new search with a new keyword inside that one video.

Right now, if politics isn’t your cup of tea, Google Audio Indexing probably isn’t a whole lot of use to you. But once they open it up to other non-political YouTube videos, then it will become VERY useful to EVERYONE. For your videos to be indexed by GAI, it just needs to be on YouTube, nothing more or less. So if you have say speeches on YouTube or screencasts, tutorials, anything which is heavily tilted towards you talking a lot then GAI is going to be your best friend. Simply because your voice is going to be turned into words and then indexed on Google Search.

So now is the time for you to get all those other videos uploaded to YouTube. So when GAI is finally taken out of Labs and opened up to other videos, your work is sitting there ready and waiting to be transcribed, converted, indexed and searchable for people to find on Google.