What Is Voice Search?

Voice search uses voice to ask questions or issue instructions to devices compatible with it, such as smartphones and smart speakers. The person searching for the information communicates with the device, and the device responds to the requester’s replies to question.

To make this article, we’ll concentrate on the question-based search. It is the most valuable and exciting for businesses (unlike setting timers or performing music).

History of Voice Search

Google Voice Search was a Google Labs application that enabled users to make Google searches using their mobile phones. When the user dialed (650) 623-3706, the Google Voice number search system, they had to listen for the word Say Your Search Keywords and then say the words. After that, they can either sit and wait for the page to be updated or click a link to open the search page that the user had requested. In the present, both the demonstration of this service and the webpage were removed. Since the service’s launch, several products from Google such as GOOG-411 Google Maps and Google Mobile App have been designed to use technology to recognize speech in different ways.

On the 30th of October, 2012, Google launched a brand updated Google Search app for iOS that included an upgraded Google Voice Search function, like Siri. Voice Search function found in Google’s Android Jelly Bean. It aimed to compete against Apple’s Siri The app has been well-liked by users who have reviewed it to Siri, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s side-by-side comparison stated it was Siri’s Voice Search on iOS is “amazingly quick and relevant, and has more depth [than Siri].”

It’s important to note that, as of May 2016, 20 percent of mobile device search inquiries were voice-based, and that percentage is expected to rise.

How Does Voice Search Work?

Without going too deeply into the technical aspects of voice search, digital voice assistants are based on:

Transcribing and processing human voice into text

Reading the text to identify commands and questions

Connecting to data sources from outside like search engines to find the pertinent information

Transforming the information into an easily digestible format that can meet the desire of the user

The way voice search works is more complicated than that as there’s plenty of machine learning taking place so these programs can understand the language of natural speech and searcher intention. These programs are incredibly advanced and growing exponentially.

Who Are The Best Players In The Voice Search Market?

The main participants within the US smart speaker market are as follows (in order of market share):

Amazon (63.2%)

Google (31%)

Other (5.8%)

It’s also important to remember that most voice searches occur on mobile devices rather than intelligent speakers. Two of the main competitors for assistants on smartphones have been Apple (Siri) and Google.

Where Do Voice Assistants Get Their Information?

The voice assistants and smart speakers draw their information from various sources of data, including search engines, Wikipedia, and many other websites. To help a company improve their content to work with voice search, it is essential to know where the various voice assistants get their information.

Alexa gets its information from various third-party sources, including IMDB, AccuWeather, Yelp, Answers.com, and Wikipedia. When a user uses the Alexa Skills specific to it, the information will be taken from the database linked to the Skill.

As you would think, Google pulls information directly from Google Search and their index of trillions of pages. If your content is easily discovered and crawlable by Google Search, you’re in a good position. If you’re concerned that the content you’ve created isn’t crawlable, tools such as Google Search Console could assist in identifying potential problems. According to our studies, the majority of times, the result provided by Google Assistant is the same as the snippet of content that users would get when typing in their question…but it’s not always the case.

Siri is also able to pull its information from Google Search. It was previously sourced from Bing but changed to Google in the latter part of 2017. It relies on Apple Maps data for local businesses, using Yelp to provide reviews information.

The best practices for voice search optimization for your website?

Our research on our own has proven that making content that is optimized to be optimized for voice search comes down to three factors:

Be sure that your content is indexed and available on all essential databases (Google search, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Wikipedia, etc.)

Use traditional SEO best methods to rank your pages or listings at the top of search engines. Your content may be constructed to support voice search, but if it’s not listed on Page 1, it’s unlikely to be found as the solution.

Make your message concise and answer the question simply. Our research shows that the aim of 30-40 words in a reading grade of 6-7 is the best.

We conducted this study by developing a technology developed by Wpromote known as Bixby Fetch!, which automates the process of asking inquiries for voice search devices, transcribes the responses, and examines the websites where the answers were given. This allows us to collect information about thousands of queries without having to lock someone up in the same room for weeks using a Google Home speaker. We require a list of questions for feeding to Bixby Fetch! It takes care of the rest.

As well as the previous There are two kinds of structured data released in the year 2019 and can be automatically voice-search friendly for Google devices. HowTo and FAQ schemas automatically generate an action for Google Assistant (Actions are similar in terms of Alexa Skills). This page has the complete details and the eligibility requirements for these schema types. If you’re using this type of material on your website, We strongly suggest using this markup.

Most Popular Voice Search Tools for Local Businesses

Smartphone (56 percent have tried)

Desktop/Laptop (28%)

Tablet (26%)

Smart Speaker (18%)

Although voice search has experienced massive growth in recent years, its popularity of use for local businesses still can increase. Fifty-eight percent of consumers utilized voice to search for information about the local business over the past twelve months, with various consumers using the four major voice search devices.

However, local businesses will likely reap the benefits of a steady increase in voice searches. Twenty-five percent of consumers said they had not yet conducted voice searches for local businesses but are likely to do so shortly.

With the potential of 82 percent of consumers interested in using voice search locally, businesses must ensure that they’re visible and provide the information consumers need through voice search results.

In the wake of intelligent speakers dominating headlines, we were astonished to see that the percentage of consumers who had utilized smart speakers for local business searches was tiny (18 18%). But, this is precisely the same as the figure of one in six Americans that own the smart speaker suggesting that the conversation of Alexa, Google Home, and similar devices is louder than the actual effect.

We’d anticipate seeing this number increase according to the growing popularity of smart speakers, particularly if they are gaining popularity with the older consumers familiar with these.

Unsurprisingly, people aged 18-34 are the most likely to have conducted local searches (76%). Local search (76 percent). For those between 35 and 54, the figure was 64 percent. Only 37 percent of consumers over 55 years old have attempted voice search to search for local businesses.

The reality is voice search right now is more about the portability aspect. More and more consumers depend on their phones and smartphones, with 61% of males and 50 percent of females using phones to perform local voice searches during the past year.

Top Industries For Voice Searches

Cafés and restaurants (51 percent of consumers would prefer using voice search to locate)

Grocery stores (41 percent)

Food delivery (35%)

Clothing stores (32 percent)

Hotels / Bed & Breakfasts (30%)

Each type of business we add to our consumer panel could be an excellent candidate for local voice searches. There was a varying scale in the importance of these businesses; however, even those on the bottom, like builders, accountants, and removalists, could not reach potential customers if they Were not appearing.

Logically, the sectors that are most likely to receive lots of “discovery” voice searches typically see more frequent searches. In the end, a person who searches is likely to have a more frequent need for a grocery store than a brand new accountant!

We’ve observed that restaurants have the most significant benefits from optimizing their websites for voice search through the research. Businesses that have the highest visibility on voice searches will have the advantage of standing out from their competition at the beginning of the voice search revolution.

While you shouldn’t solely optimize on voice search, there are numerous ways to boost your visibility. Search results for voice search results, especially for Google Home, are often taken from featured snippets of content. Therefore, you should build your content strategy around the queries that nearby users need to answer.

Schema markup that is correctly set up can increase your chances of having the correct data showing up on voice searches. Be careful to ensure that these are current or risk being victims of a Google manual error. Becoming ahead of the game and focused on broad search visibility will increase the chances of being included in voice results today and in the future. 

Consumers use voice search to locate local businesses’ telephone numbers and addresses, directions, and hours of operation.

33% of them have ordered food through voice search

People are willing to try various voice-based functions

Users utilize local voice searches for many reasons; however, our study shows that they’re more likely to have conducted searches to search for additional information on companies that they know(such as addresses, directions, or the number). People who search will not utilize the technology for business-related search purposes.

Ratings for reviews aren’t standard, but they have a lot of potentials, with 47% of customers expecting to do so in the future. This could be due to the various capabilities of the different voice search technologies when it concerns ratings and reviews.

Thirty-three percent of consumers have called a local company using the smart speaker, making it all the more crucial that the information be up-to-date online. Our most recent Local Citations Trust Report found that 36 percent of consumers have called the wrong business number due to inaccurate information on the internet, which is why it’s crucial to local businesses to verify that their online listings for business are correct to prevent this.

It’s still early to see how people behave about voice search, so it’ll be interesting to see if consumers’ percentage of these functions increases in the coming years. What happens if consumers reconsider what they’d never do as functions are made more popular?

Consumers Use Voice to Make Purchases

13. Voice is expected to become an industry worth $40 billion in 2022. Presently, voice shopping accounts for about $2 billion in consumer spending. Today’s marketers must learn how to listen to and comprehend their consumers’ opinions to take advantage of this attractive growth potential.

OC&C Strategy Consultants 14. A whopping 43% of voice-enabled device users utilize the device to purchase. All age groups of consumers are using their devices to aid in making purchases, an increase of 41% just in 2018. 

Narvar 15. 51% of customers who buy through voice use it to look up items. 22% of these consumers purchase directly via voice, and 17 percent use it for order products. (Source:

Narvar 16. 11.5 percent Of smart speaker owners purchase through voice each month. This is equivalent to more than 5.5 million US adult consumers who regularly purchase items using the smart speaker. 

Voicebot 17. Fifty-two percent Of intelligent speaker owners are interested in receiving information on deals, sales, and special offers from brands. People are interested in establishing connections with brands through voice channels.

Popular Voice Search Devices and Search Engines

If you take a look in your purse or your desk at this moment (perhaps even in your hand), There’s a high chance that you’ll see the voice search device. Another reason voice search is so popular is that it is available on nearly every device we use, making it easy to find.

Here are a few examples of the most popular voice search devices and the search engines they use:

Google Home: Google

Amazon Echo/Alexa: Bing

Google Assistant: Google

iPhone/Siri: Safari

Android phones and other devices: Google

Microsoft Cortana: Bing

That means that whether it’s your smartphone, television or portable speaker, or any other device that can search the web through speech.

How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?

If you type a query into Google, What do you expect to accomplish?

The first step is to comprehend what you’re trying to convey by the question (helping it comprehend the kind of results you’d like to be able to see). Then, it will show you the most relevant results in line with your search inquiry.

What we do when we input our queries into Google is different from how we communicate with the voice assistants. If, for instance, you’re searching for the best local dining establishment, then your searches could look like this:

Typing: “Restaurants close to me.”

voice: “What are some good restaurants close to me?”

We typically search using extremely keyword-based searches; however, our searches are much more conversational when we utilize voice search. This means that search engines need to be highly adept at semantics, which is the ability to understand the meaning behind the words.

The way we communicate is complex, and it’s difficult for machines to comprehend the nature of words (imagine how many words can have different meanings). Voice search has made it necessary for search engines to get much more adept at this, and Google has been a leader with significant updates like Hummingbird.

This and previous ones have transformed SEO by shifting the focus off of keywords (in the beginning, the users would cram keywords in their articles) and significantly more to the user experience.

Voice search is a significant factor in this change that continues to be a factor, emphasizing user experience, not just the keywords.

Ways to Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search will be around for a while. There are voice devices that can be searched all around you, and the share of voice searches as a share of all searches is growing ( usage increased by 8 percent between September and the beginning of 2019).

It’s good to know that you do not have to rip up your existing SEO strategy to optimize your site for voice search. Voice search is part of the general trend of matching users’ intent and delivering the best user experience. Therefore, strategies you employ to improve your SEO for voice search can benefit your SEO as a whole.

Optimize for Local Search

 More than three times as many voice searches are for local information than text-based queries.

When you think about it, this is logical. If you’re on the go and need an immediate answer to your query, it’s simple to pull on your smartphone device and ask an inquiry. It’s therefore essential to concentrate on the local part that you incorporate into your SEO.

For many companies, local SEO is a crucial element of digital marketing in general. Local searches represent about 46 percent of the total searches and are very engaged buyers. Local customers are the ones who come to your shop and purchase something right away; it is the reason that being visible on your local search packs is crucial for any brick and mortar company.

Local SEO adheres to the same guidelines that regular SEO follows. The most important thing (that many websites ignore) is constantly reminding people that you’re a local company. Make sure that you’re writing content that’s appropriate to your local location and incorporate local search terms in your content.

To get local keyword ideas, and to make sure that you’re answering questions local people ask:

terms used to describe the community around your place

landmarks that surround your business

the names that are the titles of local institutions that may be relevant to your business

Use “Hey Google” voice search actions.

You may utilize your voice to do functions. Such as searching for directions and creating reminders. For instance, to check whether rain is predicted in the forecast, ask, “Hey Google, do I need an umbrella tomorrow?”

When you can say, “Hey Google.”

If the device’s screen is active or your device is charged If the device is charging, you can say “Hey Google” from any screen. This option could block other voice applications that use warm words or commands to wake up from being used.

The user can shout “Hey Google” while utilizing Google Maps and Android Auto.

You can use the phrase “Hey Google” whether your screen is turned on or off.

If you lock your computer screen

If you speak “Hey Google” from a secure lock screen, and we can hear your voice, You can request Google to do something for you or browse websites without manually accessing the device.

Find individual results from the results of your voice searches, even when your device is locked.

“Hey Google” voice model

Learn to teach Google to hear your voice over and over. Do this to see if Google doesn’t recognize your voice as you speak “Hey Google.” If you’re not seeing this option, ensure that “Hey Google” is turned on.

Delete voice model on the device:

Take away what you’ve taught Google to recognize your voice on the device.

If you’re using Google’s Google application across more than one device, you can turn off “Hey Google” on each device.

Make sure you are using the most current edition of Google’s app. Google application.

Verify that you have the most recent Android version installed on your device.

Learn how to fix problems by using “Hey Google.”

Delete “Hey Google” audio recordings

If you configure your Assistant to utilize Voice Match, the audio recordings made through the voice characters are saved on the Google Account. You can search for and delete the recordings you have saved to the Google Account.

On your Android phone or tablet, go to myactivity.google.com.

In the search bar, Tap to reveal Other Google Activity.

Under “Voice and Face Match enrollment,” select to view the information.

Google Voice Search in YouTube

From March 2010 onwards, a beta version that is a beta-grade version of Google Voice Search is used on YouTube to enable optional automated annotations to videos with text if annotations aren’t available. This feature is targeted at the hearing impaired and, as of time, is only accessible for English-speaking users.

Voice searches answer questions

Voice assistants use the so-called conversational search questions to discover an answer to a particular query. These types of questions are said in a complete natural language sentence and the answer in the form of a complete sentence. This is something to remember while working on your SEO strategy for content. If you ask: What’s the weather like in Amsterdam today? You might be able to get an answer like ‘It’s mostly cloudy, and there’s a slight possibility of rain. The highest temperature is 16C. If you’re on a mobile device or/and using a touchscreen device, this outcome could be accompanied by a display that displays the current conditions.

This technology keeps becoming more sophisticated.

In the beginning, the search using your voice was slow and prone to errors. Many quit in frustration. Nowadays, voice-operated technology is becoming smart quickly. Please take a look at it this way: you can now alter the spelling of the search query if a result returned with the wrong keywords (night or. Knight knight vs. night]. Searches can now consider the previously asked information and allow more questions to narrow the results. This means that you can use a voice assistant to search for the entire collection of Kevin Spacey’s films. You can then narrow it down to the films he received the Oscar for. Also, those that feature co-starred with Morgan Freeman.

Context is a significant factor in the latest advancements that have led to the development of voice assistants. They examine the world around you and offer relevant results or recommendations to perform more and more. If you’re home, you could receive different choices than when you’re on your way to work. If you’re running one particular application or running, the Assistant could utilize the information to determine the activities you’re doing or what you’d like to accomplish. This is just the beginning. We will see a lot more developments in this area.

Now it’s time for your website to do Voice Search SEO and Voice Search Optimization. Need Services? Contact me. Contact Now