One of the biggest changes in internet search over the past few years has to be the emergence and rise of voice search. With devices and tools such as Siri, OK Google and Amazon Alexa becoming widely available, more and more people are utilising the power of their voice to perform day-to-day tasks such as doing internet searches, sending text messages, making a call or even doing their weekly grocery shop. At this point in time, the smartphone has to be the most popular way this type of activity is being performed, with over 2.1 billion people owning the devices and the use of voice search doubling year on year with it anticipated to power more than 50% of searches by 2020.
This interactive infographic from PlayMobi shows you how many people are making internet searches on their smartphones every second and also includes how many of those searches were made using voice search.
Year after year, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming smarter at reducing the number of errors made by voice assistants, whether they be Google, Siri or Alexa. This is seen as one of the major factors contributing to the slow adoption of voice search in the past. Users were annoyed with the in accuracy of speech recognition and the lack of relevant search results. However, natural language processing (NLP) has now proved itself in becoming precise enough for everyday use. Because of the steady growth in accuracy rate percentage, the list of real world use cases is rapidly increasing.
Is your business voice search ready? With the recent influx of this technology, businesses should be thinking about how they can adapt their current marketing campaigns and website content to accommodate these new emerging changes and secure their future in SEO success.
To make a start, you need to put yourself in the consumer’s mind and establish what kind of questions they are going to be asking. Straight away there is a noticeable difference between a voice search and a search typed out on a keyboard. We find ourselves altering our search behavior, starting our searches with the words why, what, where, when, who and how. This is just one of the many changes we can take advantage of to get ahead of the crowd. Voice search technology is something you can’t afford to ignore.
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