Phone it in: Goog-411

Google is great. You can use it to find just about any piece of infor­ma­tion ever pro­duced. But, what is one to do when infor­ma­tion is needed and a com­puter is not handy? Sim­ple, just call in your search. Dial 1–800-GOOG-411, and get con­nected to what­ever busi­ness, orga­ni­za­tion, or ser­vice you are search­ing for. Google will lit­er­ally run a search on the key­words you pro­vide, and then read back the results to you one by one. This is really handy for peo­ple who spend a lot of time behind the wheel — think sales peo­ple, ser­vice reps, busi­ness train­ers. Want to find the near­est Pizza place, hos­pi­tal, hotel, or book store? Sim­ply speak the city where you are located fol­lowed by the name of the busi­ness, ser­vice, or prod­uct you need and voila. Unlike typ­i­cal 411 services,there is no charge for the ser­vice, and just like a nor­mal Google search, you get mul­ti­ple results. If your phone is web enabled, Goog 411 can even map direc­tions for you on the spot. This, along with Jott.com are hard­wired into my speed dial. I have been using this ser­vice for months now, and can’t remem­ber life with­out it. This ser­vice fur­ther empha­sizes the impor­tance your web site’s abil­ity to per­form well in search. On the web, peo­ple are not prone to go more than a few pages deep to find some­thing. This oppor­tu­nity seems lim­ited until you con­sider the phone. How many list­ings will some­one sit through until they decide to make a choice over the phone? One? Three? Seven? Some­thing to think about as you con­sider your site’s search per­for­mance. Give Goog-411 a try.
1–800-GOOG-411: Find and con­nect with local busi­nesses for free from your phone.