Voice Search

Google says 72% of people who own a smart speaker
have made it part of their daily routine. ThinkWithGoogle
Voice adoption keeps growing
1 in 4 American households own at least 1 smart speaker. Nielsen
Today, 6% of US adults have shopped by voice.
This is expected to reach 49% by 2023. BusinessInsider
Voice Search is growing fast!
By 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. comScore
Voice growing on mobile
Google says 20% of mobile search queries are Voice Searches. SearchEngineLand
Voice search opens a new opportunity for savvy websites. People are turning more and more to voice assistants and smart speakers for search, and most people just query in a natural way... by asking a question.

Voice Search is powered by Bing and Google

The Semantic Web

The semantic web is next-level embedded meta data for helping search engines understand CONTEXT ie implied meaning from content. These tags are known as RDF (Resource Description Framework) and RDFa (Resource Description Framework in Attributes.)

Structured Data

Schema - a vocabulary for structured content founded by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! -- powers search results and provides searchable direct answers. When structured optimally, these schema "cards" become part of the search engines' knowledge graphs in turn giving your website higher authority and visibility.

JSON-LD: a new standard?

JSON-LD appears to be the emerging favorite over Microdata and RDFa for structured data on websites. JSON-LD is a key technology for Web 3.0.

How to Optimize for Voice Search (so far)

  • Use schema-structured data.
  • Accelerate your website! Your mobile pagespeed scores matter now more than ever.
  • FAQ pages (frequently asked questions) work great. Short, concise answers are optimal for answering questions and can qualify as featured voice snippets.
  • Consider the coming monetization of voice search: getting qualified and optimized for voice is going to be huge. The race is on for websites to establish themselves with authority in voice search.
Frequently Asked Questions: 

What are some examples of using voice search?

Asking Siri on your iphone for results from the web is voice search. Android phones and Google home devices also offer Google voice assistant. The most-used voice assistant is Amazon's Alexa on their Echo and Echo Dot. Microsoft devices use Cordana. As of 2018, one of 6 families in the U.S. have voice search devices in their homes.

How is voice search different from desktop search?

Voice searches are usually "conversational" through a digital assistant versus typing in short phrases. Voice search is powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence) so it's always getting smarter. Voice searches, such as through Google Voice search, are often complex queries and shorter interactions.People usually need a quick answer to what, who, how, when, or where. Follow-up questions can be contextual, where the AI understands the context of your follow-up question.

Which method should I use for semantic web / structured data?

Semantic web and structured data are pretty much the same thing now. Google accepts any of the 3: RDFa, JSON-LD, and microdata. Our research is showing that JSON-LD is emerging as the new standard for structured data.

What is JSON file format?

JSON is JavaScript Object Notation. JSON-LD is JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data. The JSON format is for providing rich data snippets on your page for search retrieval and display.