Search Engine for Sounds

9th June 2007

I was looking for particular type of audio file to use on a website, and wasn’t having much success with Google.

Finally, it occurred to me that maybe there’s a search engine devoted to sounds, and sure enough there is. It’s called Findsounds.com - and not only can you preview the sounds without ever leaving the search results, but you can also “see” them.

For example, if you search for “bell” you can see from the snapshot below that you can tell he if it’s a long ringing bell or a short quick one.

After listening to a couple of the sounds, (which you can do without visiting the individual websites),  I could can quickly tell at a glance of the page what the sample will sound like.  With a little practice, you can even identify pitch.

Now how do you optimize your sounds to come up high in the search engines? I’ll have to save optimization of your multimedia files for another day…