voice search
Hey Google!! How Will You Charge Me For Voice Search?
Voice Search is a very fancy term nowadays in business & everyday life. Everybody wants to get familiar with it.
So, What is Voice Search?
Voice Search is searching your query on the web by using your voice instead of manually typing on the keyboard.
There are lots of advantages in using voice search as first it saves your time and gives more accurate results than the manual search.
Statistics suggest that humans can type 40 words per minute compared to speak 150 words per minute. Voice search also provides convenience to people in which they can use it on the go compared to limited usage situations of manual typing.
According to Comscore, 50% of searches will be from voice search by 2020. So, the Voice search market is in expansion mode and will be valued at $601 Million by 2019.
According to the Search Engine Watch report, the query “voice search” (Where, When) increased to 300% in 2017 compared to the year 2016. These statistics are shown below in the graph.
In Google Marketing Next 2017, There was an announcement related to Google Voice search data integration with Physical inventory & Location data.
Now, the interpretation is that physical stores can integrate their location data with voice search queries.
For Example, whenever People will be searching with voice- “OK Google, Show me New Smartphones of 2018” & any mobile store can optimize this voice query by integrating their store location and inventory with very ease.
Major Players Capitalising On Voice Search
Google Home is the smart speaker from Google which uses voice assistant to provide answers to all voice queries. Home can do this by using smart technology like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
It was first launched in the United States Of America in November 2016. Google sold around 7.6 Million units of Home Products in Q4 2017.
Google has also launched two variants named “Google Home Mini” & Google Home Max” in order to increase sales. Google is slowly and steadily building its future technology based on voice search.
Alexa is an intelligent personal assistant and working on voice search technology. It was launched in November 2014. Alexa is a product of Amazon. Since It’s launch, there are lots of variants available in the market.
Alexa Products Portfolio:-
These products can do a variety of tasks like delivering answers, play the music of your choice, daily news, nearby shops opening & closing times, weather updates, saving To-do notes & set reminders, etc.
It is clear from the image that Google Home is way behind than Alexa products in sales data for Q3 2017. In a recent update, People living in Alberta can check the Emergency services wait times by asking Alexa.
In addition, they can also get news related to Health services delivered in Alberta.
Cortana is a smart virtual assistant created by Microsoft for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, etc. devices.
It was launched on April 2, 2014, at Microsoft BUILD DEVELOPER Conference, San Francisco.
Apple HomePod is a smart speaker from Apple. They first announced this speaker on June 5, 2017, at Worldwide Developers Conference.
The HomePod was launched on February 9, 2018, in Australia, USA & UK. It is available in 2 different colors including white and space grey. Since launching, Apple HomePod has grabbed 6% of Market share in the smart speaker category.
Partnership Of Brands With Smart Speakers
In August 2017, Walmart has made a deal with Google to enable voice-enabled shopping. This deal can be beneficial for both Google and Walmart.
Walmart can showcase its products on Google Home after voice search results and earn higher revenue with only major players optimizing “voice search” results.
Voice Assisted Search Engine Optimisation (VSEO)!!
With the Voice search trends in 2018, every marketer should optimize their website for the voice search query. So, the terminology has changed from SEO to VSEO.
For Optimisation, Marketer has to find out the most common voice search queries.
For Example Restaurant in London can optimize their website for search queries like “Restaurants near me”, “Cheap Restaurants in Stratford” and “Which Restaurant has Italian food options available??” etc.
The Marketer has to make the list of common voice search queries and then optimize the website according to that.
Benefits Of Voice Assisted Search Engine Optimisation
The main benefit of VSEO is increased ranking on Google Organic search results.
If some specific keyword (“near me”) is highlighted in website content, then Google can display that result with featured snippets too.
Voice Search To Paid Voice Search
2020 is the year of voice search but what about paid voice search?? The question is how to find the proper platform and way to deliver ad against voice search query??
There are experiments going on with regard to paid voice search.
So, every content marketer and blogger on marketing website talked about paid voice search and it’s potential benefits/risks. Nobody is providing an optimal solution to this question. Before going ahead with ads based on voice search, we have to find out the search behavior of people using smart speakers.
People are very self-aware of their search results. There are mostly 2 situations in which they use voice search.
- In-home activities (Watching TV, Handling Kids, Relaxing, etc.)
- Out of Home Activities (People driving their car, on the go in public vehicles, etc.)
Also, We have to find out the most common activities for which people use search queries. For In-home activities, we can consider Pizza delivery at home or some personal interest work, etc.
For Out of Home Activities, we can consider Finding New Restaurants, New Streets, etc. The urgency of getting search results is also one of the prime indicators of search behavior.
For finding out whether paid voice search will be feasible or not, the Marketer can integrate search behavior with the type of smart speakers used for delivering voice search-based results.
With regards to the smart speaker, one can choose from Homepod, Google Home Mini or Alexa Echo. Also, most of the speakers and devices are working on audio. So, the display ad has no future as of now.
2020 will be the year of paid voice search!!
