Google Launches Audio Indexing

GAudi

As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we’re looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced Wednesday that it has launched audio indexing in Google Labs.

Dubbed GAudi, the new service is designed to work with YouTube, and will catalog all the words uttered during an audio or video clip. Once collected, the transcript will be added to a searchable database that can be accessed in much the same way you search for text-based websites.

But before you start wondering if Google has indexed your latest vlog, don’t get too excited. According to the company, GAudi is only in beta at this point and during that time, it will only index audio and video from political sources.

Aside from being able to search for terms mentioned in the video, you can click on a group of play buttons to bring you to the exact point in the video where the keyword is mentioned. In other words, if you’re searching for discussions the candidates have had about health, simply input that into the search field, and the best video result will be shown in the right pane. You can either choose to watch the entire video or click on the links below to be brought to the exact moment during the video that health was said by the political figure.

Google didn’t give any word about what would happen to GAudi after it’s done indexing political speeches, but the service has some promise and is definitely worth checking out.