Google is now rolling out the Google Assistant to more devices. The announcement coincides with the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain.
Google Assistant is currently available on the Pixel smartphone, Google Home and its messaging app Allo, and Android Wear. It will also be available soon on Android 6.0 and 7.0 devices.
Basically, Google Assistant is an AI-powered successor to voice search. The idea behind the Assistant is to be conversational and go beyond simple voice query input and text-to-speech play back. But, most users won’t see a dramatic difference between voice search today and Google Assistant.
Google Assistant experiences could become very different from conventional search as third-party services and transactions (“actions“) are increasingly integrated. Stone Temple Consulting did a recent survey where they found that the 60 percent of users wanted more “direct answers” without having to visit another website. This mean more answers and less links.
This request and desire and Google effort to fulfill it will have some pretty big implications for SEO and third-party exposure in search results.
According to Google, the rollout to the US market will begin this week, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia and Germany. There will be even more countries and languages that will be added “in the coming year.”