In the future, many of us will likely regularly be searching the web not by typing, but instead barking voice commands to our computers or smartphones like we are in Star Trek. The pretty self-explanatory Google Voice Search already makes this possible – and you should suitably prepare your company’s website for when, metaphorically speaking, we all turn into William Shatner.
How can you use Google Voice Search?
Upon loading the Google website in the Chrome browser, you can start a voice search by clicking or tapping the microphone icon on the main search field’s right-hand side. Alternatively, on Google’s search app for Android or iOS, you can say “OK, Google”.
After doing either of these things, you can then speak the words that, usually, you would type into the search field instead. However, the results brought up should remain very similar to those produced if you had done the search in the traditional manner of typing. Voice searching is primarily for convenience rather than necessarily bringing search results of a better quality.
Google’s voice recognition technology has been built into many of the company’s best-known services, including Google Maps and Google Now. Furthermore, products and apps that are fully compatible with Google Voice Search now number dozens.
Semantic search is especially straightforward
Hummingbird, the major update that Google made to its core algorithm two years ago, eased semantic search; this is search where the meaning can be implied more often than spelt out. So, if we carried out a voice search for “Hayley Atwell”, the British actress from the Captain America films, we could make follow-up queries about her without having to keep repeating her name.
Such queries could include “What character did she play in Captain America” and “How old is she”. Made by voice, these queries can feel especially natural, being nearly conversational in nature. You would feel more like you are interacting with a person rather than a computer.
Voice searches look set to grow more popular
The virtual assistant Google Now draws upon the search giant’s sophisticated search algorithms and natural language processing technology, helping to make it more useful for many people than Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana.
Also, Google Trends data hints that Google Voice Search’s popularity has, since 2010, grew sevenfold, while Andrew Ng, of Chinese search engine Baidu, has speculated that voice searches will make up about half of all searches by 2020.
Why not prepare for that future now? If, for your company’s website, you are utilising the current best practices for SEO, you can take comfort that you are already undergoing such preparation. If you aren’t… well, you have much work ahead.
Thankfully, at JAK Inc, we know how to use SEO that could help your website fare better in Google’s search engine results pages… including those pages that arise from use of Google Voice Search. We can tell you more when you email us via sales@jakinc.uk or call us on 0191 3882 698. We offer many other services in addition to SEO, however; please visit our website to learn about those.