An approach to alignment of transcripts with recorded audio is tolerant of moderate transcript inaccuracies, untranscribed speech, and significant non-speech noise. In one aspect, a number of search terms are formed from the transcript such that each search term is associated with a location within the transcript. Possible locations of the search terms are then determined in the audio recording. The audio recording and the transcript are then aligned using the possible locations of the search terms. In another aspect a search expression is accepted, and then a search is performed for spoken occurrences of the search expression in an audio recording. This search includes searching for text occurrences of the search expression in a text transcript of the audio recording, and searching for spoken occurrences of the search expression in the audio recording.