Conversational Search by Google has Arrived

June 25, 2013

Notice the ‘search by voice’ function on your Google search bar? Well, that has been there for almost two years now so it is about time. However, you may have noticed something different about its functionality. Once you speak to it, it speaks back to you directly with an answer. Search Engine Land covers this new development in “Google’s Impressive ‘Conversational Search’ Goes Live on Chrome.”

The author of this article acknowledges that that’s cool and impressive, speaking a search and getting an answer read back to you. However, this is the really cool aspect:

“What’s really special is that you can continue your search “conversation” by asking further questions in a way you could never do with regular search, by making use of pronouns and other shortcuts that reference things in your previous query. For example, after doing the search above, I asked, ‘how tall is he’ and got back this: ‘Barack Obama is six feet one inch tall,’ came back the spoken response, along with a text answer. But I hadn’t asked tall Barack Obama was. I’d asked, ‘How tall is he.’

We wonder what audience these feats are impressing: professional researchers, dabblers, advertisers? Who really benefits from this?

Megan Feil, June 25, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

Comments

Comments are closed.

  • Archives

  • Recent Posts

  • Meta