Google Labs lets you search the words on YouTube

One of my favorite parts of Google is a site called Google Labs, where Googlengineers put features they're developing or playing with and let the general public try out. If you go over there now -- it's at http://labs.google.com/ -- you'll see, among other things, maps of Mars, a taxi service, and different ways of searching.

The latest offering from the labs is GAudi, at http://labs.google.com/gaudi. This new tool allows you to search the audio of YouTube videos. Of course, it's experimental, so the data you can search is limited -- currently it's just political videos from YouTube.

It works much like the regular Google search -- just enter some search terms and jump right in. You'll find that this search engine is pretty much for national candidates, though there are state-level politicians represented here. On the other hand, the search engine is broader than it looks. When you first go to the site you'll see that your search results can come from All Politicians, McCain, or Obama. That might lead you to believe that only those two candidates are represented in this search engine. But just a few searches shows there's video from other candidates as well, including Bob Barr and Ralph Nader.

Because the news is scaring the heck out of me I did a search for crisis banks "wall street". And here's where GAudi falls a little short -- I would like the option to search within timeframe. I'm not as interested in all the talk in the last week -- but what were politicians saying months ago? Who was sounding the alarm?

The GAudi search results show comments from the major candidates, of course, but also videos from senators and other politicians. (The oldest result I saw was from 11 months ago.) Results include a screen shot of the video, title, when the video was produced ("11 months ago", "18 hours ago", etc.), and how long it is. On the right side of the search results is a video window. When you pick a search result, the video associated with the search result loads on the right. Small yellow markers show where your keywords appear in the video. Transcripts underneath the video give you a little bit of context for the search (a little -- not much.) There's also a search box for searching just within that one video.

I did a variety of searches and found videos from all parts of the political spectrum. For fun, though, I recommend you try random, decidedly non-political words. Searching for cows found the amazing "First Lady of Indiana Wins Cow Milking Contest".