Google announced a number of upgrades to its voice search application today. One of them looks like it could be particularly troublesome to local search directory players. From TechCrunch:
Another feature is the ability to call any business in Google Search. This does not have to be a company in your local contacts app — it can be any business.
I haven’t seen this in action yet, but if it acts the way I think it does then there will be one less reason to do a mobile Web query for a business. Google Place Pages are already sucking away traffic from local directory services but if a lot of people start using Google’s “Voice Action” to search, then people will just be directly connected to the business, which is great for users, but bad for anyone who is trying to connect customers with businesses. There will still be opportunities for service category queries (e.g. pizza in pleasanton) but big bro is watching those as well.
Tweet
3 Response Comments
Mike Blumenthal does an INCREDIBLE demo of this feature at our Local University Series. It actually works amazingly well for service category queries already…so much for that hypothesis…
Time to call it a day then I guess…
How does it work, exactly? You just say “call pizza” into your phone and it calls the first local result for pizza wherever it senses you are?