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What Is Voice Search and How Does it Work? – Guide
Google processes over 40,000 searches every second, and that number is steadily growing every year. While our need for instant answers hasn’t changed, the way we look for those answers and how Google presents the answers has changed. For example, there is now a much greater marketing focus on things like natural language processing (NLP) and how that affects voice search.
As Internet search has moved from being primarily desktop-based to mobile-oriented, the most notable change is the way people search with voice assistants. Be Apple’s Siri, Google Home, or Amazon’s Echo device, people are hands-free when searching. As voice searches increase, here are a few things you should know about optimizing your website to continue reaching your valued customers.
What is voice search?
Voice search is the action of using speech to ask questions and give commands to compatible devices such as smartphones or smart speakers. The researcher talks to the device and the device either fulfills the command or answers the question.
For the purposes of this article, we will focus on question-based research, as this will be of greater interest and value to companies (as opposed to actions like setting timers or playing music).
How does voice search work?
Without delving into the technical details of voice search, digital voice assistants work:
How voice search works is obviously more complex than that, and there’s a lot of machine learning going on for these programs to better understand natural language and the true intent of the searcher. These programs are incredibly sophisticated and are improving tremendously.
Who are the main players in the voice search market?
The key players in the US Smart Speakers Market are as follows (in order of market share):
However, it is important to note that the majority of voice searches are actually taking place in mobile devices, not smart speakers. For smartphone assistants, the 2 main competitors are Apple (Siri) and Google.
Where do voice assistants get their information?
Voice assistants and smart speakers pull your information from various data sources, including search engines, Wikipedia, and other top sites. For a company to optimize its content for voice search, it is imperative to understand where different voice assistants get their information from.
Alexa gets its information from a variety of third-party sources, including IMDB, AccuWeather, Yelp, Answers.com, and Wikipedia. If a user invokes a specific Alexa skill, this data will come from the database linked to that skill.
Google, as you might expect, pulls information from Google Search and its trillion-page index. So if your content is discoverable and crawlable on Google Search, you’re in good shape. If you’re concerned that your content isn’t crawlable, tools like Google Search Console can help diagnose potential issues. Our experiments have shown that for the most part, the response returned by Google Assistant matches the featured snippet that a user would see if they typed their question… but that’s not always the case.
Siri also pulls your data from Google Search. It used to get from Bing but switched to Google in final 2017. However, for local businesses, it relies on Apple Maps data, which in turn uses Yelp for review information.
How can you optimize your site for voice search?
Our internal research has shown that successfully optimizing content for voice search comes down to 3 things:
We conducted this research by developing a technology at Wpromote called Bixby, Fetch! which automates the placement of questions to voice search devices, transcribes the answers and analyzes the web pages from which the answer was provided. This allows us to collect data on thousands of queries without having to lock someone in a room for a week with a Google Home speaker. All it takes is a starting question list to feed Bixby, Fetch! and do the rest.
In addition to the above, there are two types of structured data that were introduced in 2019 that are automatically voice search friendly on Google devices. The how-to and FAQ scheme automatically creates an action for Google Assistant (actions are equivalent to Alexa skills). You can find full documentation and eligibility requirements for these types of schemes here and here. If you have this type of content on your site, we recommend that you leverage this markup.
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