Google Audio Indexing
Google has released a beta (you know they love their betas) feature called GAudio. They recently won the right to continue their Google Book Search project and it appears they are continuing on their efforts to assimilate as much information as possible. GAudio seems the next logical step. However, this has some major implications for Search Engine Marketers.
You see, GAudio takes the audio track from YouTube videos and makes it searchable. Essentially transcribing the audio into text and then allowing you to search for that information.
The interface has Google written all over it: simple, boring, and screaming to be visited by a real UI designer. However this blog isn’t about interface, it’s about SEO and the implications for GAudio is huge especially with the push towards Universal Search Results.
You can’t tell me life isn’t cyclical – everything seems to come full circle! When we first started optimizing we paid too much attention to meta data. Keywords were key and we spammed the meta data. Then Google began to devalue the meta data and found that relevance is better served by pulling those keywords within the content of the page.
So why should a video be any different? We can all make a video and plaster it with 50+ ‘tags’ or ‘keywords’ and that has worked fairly well especially in regards to social media driven link building. However, wouldn’t the perfect evolution for video be to devalue those keywords or tags and pull weight or relevance from the actual words being said within the video?
Google’s focus for this technology is very specific right now: it’s only YouTube and it’s only been their political channel. How long to you think that will last?
Check out GAudio for yourself.