The Internet changes rapidly, which means marketers and business leaders must hurry to change with it. While most Internet searches were once done on laptops and desktops, people are now using their smartphones with similar devices to conduct searches for information, local businesses, products, and services.
That shift was closely followed by another somewhat more distinctive shift called artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted voice search.
In the past, a smartphone user would need to type a question or phrase into Google or another search engine to get a set of results to sift through. Now, AIs like Siri and Alexa – which reside in smart speakers and on smartphones, tablets, and laptops – have changed the way users are searching for the information, products, and services they need.
You can conduct searches with nothing more than the sound of your voice. And that’s rapidly changing the SEO landscape.
How voice-assisted search is changing searches
Most people have smartphones these days, and the vast majority of smartphones have voice-assisted search capabilities. According to 2017 data from the Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans now own smartphones. Among 18–29-year-olds, that same figure is 92%.
This means an enormous share of the general public is able to use voice-assisted AI search. When users of smartphones and smart speakers ask those devices for an answer to a query, that leaves the job of searching to certain AI like Siri and Alexa[1].
While Amazon’s Alexa will not deliver the answer to a voice search query unless it has been proven accurate, Google Voice Search tech (Google Home and Android devices) reports top results from Google. It doesn’t report results lower down on the search engine results page (SERP) or