Voice search optimization is a hot topic in the digital marketing industry. A few years ago, voice search seemed like a far fetched idea that was limited to some science fiction movies. But today, its popularity is increasing day by day.
If you’re a Star Trek fan, you would definitely recall the scenes when actors used to speak to computers for answers. It all looked like something that would never come into existence. Yet here we are.
Today, voice search has become so common that, according to Google, it is the fastest-growing form of online search.
So what does this new search trend mean to marketers and business owners? Why should business owners focus on building voice-search-optimized websites? Let’s see.
The rise of voice search in numbers
Voice search basically allows users to say their queries out loud rather than typing them into the search box to get the results.
The speech-recognition technology precisely understands what users are saying and then delivers the best-matching results orally.
Reports estimate that about 41% of adults perform[1] at least one voice search every day. According to ComScore[2], 50% of the total searches will be voice searches by 2020.
Let’s check out some of the critical voice search statistics:
- 61% of 25-64 and 57% of 18-24 age groups say they’ll use voice search more actively in future (PwC Research[3])
- Almost one-third of 3.5 billion searches performed on Google every day are voice searches (TheeDesign Research[4])
- More than 30% of the web browsing will be done without a screen by 2020 (Gartner[5])
- 55% of households will own smart speaker devices by 2022 (OC&C Strategy Consultants[6])
- More than 53% of smart speaker owners say that