Website Voice Recognition is a Reality

Google has rolled out its speech recognition system to its main search portal.

For those using Google Chrome the little microphone icon that appears on the right hand side of the input bar provides a very powerful way of doing searches by speech. Our testing has proved the system to be extremely powerful. Coupled with instant results being displayed you'll see your query answer almost immediately.

Of course being lovers of all things technological that's fine but what’s the value and benefit of it to the average user? Well, the first thing that springs to mind is the ease with which it enables users with disabilities to interact with the search bar. For those using altered or different input devices it can be a slower process to enter text than using the keyboard.

In addition to that, mobile devices which have this facility enabled will make data entry must easier (even the best mobile device keyboard is slower than speaking the words).

Perhaps the best use of it we found is if you don't know how to spell what you are searching for. Need some chrysanthemums for the garden? How about looking for a an exhilarating experience from a conscientious provider? For those of us not good at spelling these can become a nightmare, even with Google's "Did you mean" feature! (Both of those examples work with speech recognition).

For those that think this feature would be of great benefit to their own website we can make speech recognition available on your site (so long as the end user is using Google Chrome as their browser and has a microphone, of course). Let us know if we can help with that.

What is your experience with speech recognition, and what do you think the next big adaptation of it will be?