Never Pay for 411 Again

I hate paying for 411 calls to get a phone number for a business. If I am at home, all I have to do is get on the internet and do a Google maps search for the business name, and 90% of the time I get the phone number I need. This is of no help to me when I am away from the computer though, and need to call a business from my cell phone. My carrier seems to rape me with 411 information, and I just hate it.

Well now I have found a great solution. Google 411 ! This is another cool service being provided by the Google team. All you have to do is call 1-800-GOOG-411, supply your city and state, and then the business name or business category that you are looking for. The service will return you a list of business in that area that match your search criteria, and you can then have Google 411 call and/or text message you the details to your cell phone.

I do think that this service is very neat. What it is doing is using voice recognition software to do business searches using there business database that is backing the Google Maps service that they are providing. The service works great if you are searching for exact business names that are currently stored in there database. The service also works great when you do a category search for something like Pizza, because that is a pretty narrow category.

Things seems to be a little less reliable when the categories get a little broader. Lets say you are looking for a Attorney, who does traffic tickets. If you say “Traffic Ticket Attorneys” nothing is found. If you say “Lawyers” then all lawyers are found. For this service, or even the business portion of Google Maps to be successful, Google will need to greatly improve the way that you can search against businesses and classify them. Just because a business is of type “Attorney” does not mean that the person is the wright type of attorney they are looking for.

I also think it would be good to have the ability to search for business by the people who work there. So if you were looking for a Attorney, and you know the Attorneys name, then you say that, and it would find the Attorneys business name. The database definitely needs some work. Also business will need to start categorizing there business information more clearly for Google.