Google adds searching by voice to iPhone software.
Image from Peter DaSilva, for The New York Times
In a move that will surely strike fear in the hearts of SEO purists, Google has officially added sophisticated voice recognition technology to the company's search software for the Apple iPhone. The NYTimes wrote a superb piece on it, you can read it here.
In Typical Google Fashion...
Voice recognition is nothing particularly new - both Microsoft and Yahoo has introduced their own platforms, Microsoft TellMe and Yahoo's oneSearch, respectively. But why this is significant to users is that Google's technology builds on the limitations of the other platforms. Google's sizable advantage in search over its competitors affords it the competitive advantage in increasing its accuracy of both 1) interpreting queries and 2) retrieving data.
What this means to SEO?
Well, nothing, really. Sure, there will be inaccuracies in interpreting queries at first which will be to the frustration of the end-user. However, this scenario is similar with search on the desktop or laptop. For instance, anyone can relate to the situation where the first query you run on Google doesn't give you the results you expected. So what did you do? Refine the query, right? I anticipate this same user behavior to be more readily accepted as time goes on. Sure, queries and results will be more accurate as both user behavior and information retrieval get better. But the missing ingredient to this is how user expectations will normalize over time to get to a sweet spot - the same as if you were searching on your desktop.
Looking forward to this new trend of search and seeing how it improves business objectives.
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