Why Should You Care About Voice Search?

The way that people see and use the internet is rapidly being changed by the growth of voice search.

This has in a large part happened due to improvements in speech recognition software. Due to this, we no longer interact with the internet solely through the keyboards on our computer or mobile devices.

These days, we are talking to our devices and listening as they respond. This is creating a monumental shift in how we interact with the internet.

Have you accounted for this on your web site? Does your company’s information cater to query based searching? Or is your web site still catering to people keying searches into Google by hand?

Most web sites that have taken the time to optimize for search engines have done so based on how people used to search.

When a person wanted to find something, they would open a browser, go to Google (or other search engine, but Google is the most relevant) type in a phrase based on what they are looking for, such as “restaurants near me” or “Crocs in wide sizes”. Google would then return results based on their complex and ever changing algorithm. This algorithm would rank the answers according to what it views as being the most relevant and then send them back to you as a list. I am sure you have done this thousands of times.

Based on this pattern of searching, businesses would create content that they hoped would help them rank high according to Google’s algorithm.

This all worked really well when you were reading the results on a desktop or laptop computer, but it’s not so great if you are asking Siri or a smart speaker, such as Alexa, a question.

The Google Years

If you used to search the internet using Lycos, Excite or Alta Vista, you know how much Google simplified search.  Based on the quality of its results, people started Google more and more until it completely dominated the market. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave you much more relevant results than previous search engines did, eliminating the need to scroll through page after page looking for the right result.

Their algorithm has been updated many times to deliver better, more relevant results. Now days, you generally can find what you are looking for in the top few results and if not there, they are almost always on the first page or two.

An entire industry was born to help businesses benefit from search engine. Companies all over the world hire Search Engine Optimization companies in an effort to help them place as high as possible on Google when it returns search results.

This pretty much sums up our search experience until recent times.

The Dawn of Voice

Voice search capabilities are rapidly changing this. When you search by voice, there is no list of results to look at.  Alexa and Google Home deliver one result to you in an audible way. Because of this, it is essential to be in the top position.

While the internet of yesterday (and today) was based on textual interaction, the internet of tomorrow will be driven by an oral and aural interaction. Spoken word will replace the written word, which will dramatically change how we need to present our information online.

Rather than searches being base on a search phrase like “cat hammock” you would say something like “Siri, find me a hammock for my cat”. If you are a retailer of cat hammocks you will now need to adapt your website for this new style of searching, focusing on how to deliver results based on these changes.

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