YouTube Videos Now Searchable for What Candidates Say

Thanks to Google speech recognition technology, Internet users can now search for video clips of candidates using specific words and phrases on YouTube.

Google launched its Elections Video Search gadget yesterday, which users can add to their iGoogle homepages.

Google used speech recognition technology to transcribe candidates’ uploaded clips and index them for keywords. The search gadget guides users to parts of each video where candidates say the searched terms, highlighting those segments in the video player’s time bar.

The searchable archive includes videos from YouTube’s Politicians channels, on which 98 presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates host videos.

See a screen shot of the gadget below: