October 29, 2009

Searching for Music at Google and Yahoo

Hands-On: Google's Music Search Is Just So-So by Ian Paul, PCWorld (Oct 29)

Google has introduced a new Music Search which it describes at the Discover Music page - http://www.google.com/landing/music/. There's a search box there too but searches in the main Google search box should work too.

Ian Paul gave Google's new Music Search a good test. It's supposed to find sound clips but -- "In my (Ian Paul's) tests, Google easily delivered music samples when searching for album names, artists, and song titles. However, when I searched using song lyrics, Google often came up short"

But in my tests even using the ones from the Discover Music page I got nothing that seemed remarkable - Lady Gaga had some video results, as did Bon Jovi. Where are the music bits?

Search Engine Land's Matt McGee gave it a spin too - Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox”

Specifically - "Google’s music OneBox will include links to these music partner sites to discover more information about your music-based search, and sometimes the links will help you discover music that’s related to your search. Contrary to recent rumors, you won’t see any links to purchase the songs — at least for now."

That article has screenshots of what you should see. But those examples don't work either. Conclusion - not available in Canada yet.

Consolation - Yahoo does have music clips. Try this for Rod Stewart.

Posted by Gwen at October 29, 2009 02:04 PM