With the introduction of Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant, Voice Search looks set to be the next big thing in digital marketing. Like it or not, voice search has changed the way people search for things on the web and the way marketers reach customers. In this article, we'll take a look at how voice search works, how to optimize it, and how it will affect people's future browsing behavior.
Increasing Availability of Smart Devices
As the world becomes increasingly connected, so are people. Smart devices are more widely available, and mobile usage has risen steadily over the last decade. This means that more people can use voice search and voice assistants—and they’re doing it more often than ever before. According to a recent survey by comScore, over 1 billion consumers worldwide now use some form of artificial intelligence (AI)-based assistant on their smartphones.
Additionally, mobile commerce is taking off in popularity as an alternative to desktop e-commerce. As such, voice search is set to continue its ascent as a useful tool for both searching and buying things online.
Google Prioritizing Voice Search Results
As the future of search, voice search is already here. And Google knows it. Google has been working on improving the accuracy and speed of automatic speech recognition for years now, with projects like its DeepMind engine, which can understand human language as well as humans can.
Google also focuses on improving the speed at which search results are returned to users: from milliseconds to seconds. For example, when you use Assistant on your phone or other devices to ask for information about a nearby store or restaurant—things like "What are some restaurants near me?" or "Where's a good pizza place?"—you'll receive results faster than ever before through Google Maps and other services within seconds!
Increased Accuracy and Speed of Automatic Speech Recognition
You may have heard that voice search is a more accurate and faster way to search for information than typing. That's true, but what does it mean?
Let's talk about accuracy. People are good at speaking their language—which means that voice is an inherently accurate mode of input. But when you're searching for answers on Google or Siri, you don't speak in your native tongue: You need to use a language that computers can understand as well. This isn't just a grammar issue; it also involves understanding context and intent—in other words, what people mean when they say something (i.e., "Where did I put my keys?" vs "I need my keys").
The second is speed. It takes much longer to type than it does to speak out loud—and according has been proven time and time again through various studies over the years (including one conducted by IBM). It's often so slow that people abandon the search altogether because they don't want their hands tied up with the process of typing anything longer than two words at a time before getting frustrated and giving up on trying again later or maybe even worse yet never bothering at all since there wasn't enough incentive for them bother trying again in exchange for wasting another 5-10 minutes.
All told then these two factors combined make up what makes this particular application so popular among users today - which brings us back full circle around again into talking about why everyone seems so excited about using speech recognition technology instead.
The Challenges of Voice Search Optimization
The good news is that voice search has not yet reached its peak, and there are still ways to optimize for it. But marketers should be aware of the challenges involved in optimizing for voice search.
Voice search is still in its infancy and isn't as accurate as text search, so you have less chance of appearing on the first page of results when someone searches for your brand. For example, if a user searches for "red shoes," they might get results that show red shoes among many other red things (such as tall red trees), while if they were searching with the text they would be more likely to get only relevant information about red shoes (not tall trees). It's important to keep this in mind when considering how you want your brand represented when users ask questions using their voice.
Embracing the Long Tail with Voice Search
In the same way, that voice search is more conversational, it's also more personal. Voice search is a natural extension of how we already interact with our friends and family. We ask each other questions all the time, like "What should we do today?" "Where should I go for dinner?" or "Who are you?".
Voice search gives us a new way to have conversations with our devices, which results in better answers—after all, it doesn't have to be in exact sentence form; users can just speak their thoughts aloud and get back highly targeted results relevant to what they asked for. This makes voice search even more convenient than before because there's no need for typing anymore (especially on mobile), enabling people who are less tech-savvy than others to take part in this new way of finding information online without having any prior knowledge about how computers work!
The next big thing about voice searches is that they're more local: whereas traditional web searches only provide results from around the world at large—and sometimes not even from within your own country—now when someone asks Alexa where they can find something nearby using her built-in map function then she'll give them directions straight away instead of sending them somewhere across town when all she wanted was some food nearby.
Optimizing for Conversational Queries
Voice search is a natural way to interact with technology. It’s conversational, so users are more likely to speak naturally and less likely to be frustrated by complex commands or long lists of results. Users might ask for something like “Hey Google, is it going to rain today?” And Google will respond with the weather forecast for the day. They can also use voice search to find information about a specific topic or perform actions on their device, like turning on Bluetooth or setting an alarm clock for tomorrow morning.
The new generation of Voice Search features that Google has rolled out over time have made it easier than ever before for users to accomplish these tasks—but there are still some nuances that marketers should keep in mind when optimizing their content for this medium.
Prepare Your Website for Voice Search
If you want to stay in the game, you need to start thinking about your content in new ways and add voice search on your web, especially for e-commerce. This is just one of many examples that show how voice search technology will be used in the future. Users will no longer have to type in words or phrases into search boxes; rather, they will simply speak them aloud. Voice search has the potential to make life more convenient for users. All we need now is an AI-powered assistant like "Siri" or "Alexa" that can understand what people are saying and translate it into text searches.
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