Voice search currently exists in a few different forms. Most notably, Google offers a voice search function on its site, noted by a microphone-shaped icon that’s tucked away and rarely noticed. With this system, users can speak their queries aloud rather than typing them, conveniently initiating a search without ever touching a keyboard.
Voice search also exists in the form of virtual personal assistants, like Apple’s Siri.
Our professional SEO Expertise now help users with organizing tasks and storing information in addition to performing Web searches.
Google reports that 55 percent of teens are now using voice search, with 40 percent of adults currently using it. Those numbers don’t indicate an overwhelming majority by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re certainly up from numbers we were seeing just five years ago. Voice search is becoming more popular, and will likely continue to grow as the technology becomes more advanced and accurate.
Important Qualities of Voice Search
A person using voice search usually has different intentions than a person using traditional search. Similarly, while the fundamental search algorithm is the same for both voice and traditional search, there are different query types that voice search tends to fall under. Understanding these differences can help you prepare for an audience who prefers voice search, and can help you adjust your strategies to accommodate them.
Voice search makes keywords even less relevant; rather than typing individual words into a search bar, users speak their query, usually into a phone. Doing so naturally encourages users to speak in a conversational way, creating unique and different queries to be processed by search engines, bypassing the need for keywords and instead rewarding sites with content that falls in line with the user’s request.
Voice search is really taking off. I use it constantly and I know many of my peers do as well. Why type with your hands when you can just blurt out a search query? Now that Chrome offers voice search on a PC, it is growing even faster. Truthfully, it is going to change SEO. Voice search is young, but we better speculate on some of the implications of this budding technology now, otherwise our search strategies are going to be left in the dust.
In this post, we look at how voice search is changing, or may change, search engine optimization. Check out more marketing tips @ http://goo.gl/DmJhrg