Before say anything about Google Voice Search, let’s take a look at these statements:

• 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search everyday
• The current speech recognition word error rate is as low as 8%
• People are using long tail keywords in their voice searches

These 3 statements can be easily summed up to say that almost half the world’s smartphone users from all over are asking Google descriptive questions and getting the right result 92% of the time using Google Voice Search!

Moral of the story: Google Voice Search is here to stay and will become ever increasingly popular with time.

GOOGLE VOICE SEARCH: Marketing Impact

To explain how Search Engine Optimization will be impacted by voice search, let’s use an example.

Currently when an individual does a keyword search for the term Immigration Lawyer, Google ranks pages and chooses a particular page to display as the highest ranked keyword. This would be based on bid amounts, page quality, context, location etc. Others would miss out primarily for not bidding on Adwords for the specific keyword, in this case being Immigration Lawyer.

But with Google Voice Search, things are different. In a couple of seconds, I could make a specific search for an Immigration Lawyer within 2 kms distance from me, specializing in marriage fraud and available on weekends.

This completely changes the game. Here, Google based on intelligence and algorithms may through up very different results altogether while accommodating all the criteria I have specified. If as a marketer, I have ensured adequate responses to all the above queries on my web pages, chances are my Company’s page will be displayed as a top result.

This creates the scope for more specific long tail voice search as a tactic to ensure your organization is displayed as a result. Will these be paid in future? Google is quiet for the moment but we don’t know for sure yet.

How can I address Google Voice Search on my website?

Google this question and you will be flooded with dozens of tips and tricks from making your content more data rich, updating your sitemaps, focusing on long tail keywords and adding more micro-data to your website.

One particular quick fix which I find interesting is this one:

Have an FAQ Section:

The reason why an FAQ section is a very good idea is because FAQs are answered in the way that we speak. If your site is full of legal jargon (which is a bad idea from a ranking perspective) like the immigration firm, your FAQ section will help users find answers in the language that the ask questions. Who, what, where, why and how are frequently answer on an FAQ page and this is exactly what users are searching via Google Voice. If your questions match the language and the way users are asking, Google will reward you with higher rankings.

The future of search is in voice. The faster we embrace the new technology and prepare for its continued dominance, the better. After all, it’s easier to speak than to type, isn’t it?