In recent years, mobile searches have increased greatly and following not far behind is the number of voice searches done from these mobile devices. In fact, earlier this week during Google’s CEO I/O Keynote it was announced that 20% of queries on Google’s mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches. This number is lower than the 25% that was mentioned by Google back in September. But, whatever the precise figure is, it is clear that voice searches are growing and fast.
In December of last year, MindMeld launched a voice assist survey which found a significant increase in voice assistant and voice search usage. 60% of survey respondent said that they had started using virtual assistants and voice search in the past year, with 40% starting within the last 6 months.
There is now a wide range of virtual assistants including Siri, Cortana, Google Voice, Search/Now, Viv, Amazon Alexa and now Google has introduced Google Home. These virtual assistants encourage and train people to search using their voices which leads to more conversational searches on mobile devices.
As more and more people are searching from mobile devices and more of those searches are voice administer there are important content and SEO implications. Raise in voice searches results in a rise in longer tail key-words and question-based searches so it important your content and SEO practice reflect these changes in searches.
As these queries change, they are likely to become more transactional over time, as virtual assistants permit bookings and conversions using voice. For example, Google Home has announced it has already integrated a range of third-party transactional services including Uber, Pandora, OpenTable, Spotify, WhatsApp and Ticketmaster.