On May 18th, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced during his Google I/O keynote that 20 percent of their mobile app, as well as on Android deices, are voice searches. This was said in the context of introducing Google’s new Amazon Echo competitor, Google Home.
What’s interesting is that back in September of 2010, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt had said “25 percent of Android searches in the US are voice searches.” It seems that the amount of voice searches have dropped. Either way, some would say that the amount of voice searches are growing.
It was reported back in December on a survey data from MindMeld that there has been a significant increase in voice assistant and voice search usage. 60 percent of survey respondents said that they began using virtual assistants and voice search in the last year.
With all of the different virtual assistants out there these days, including Sir, Cortana, Google Voice Search/Now, Viv, Amazon, Alexa and Google Home, it’s no wonder that more and more people are becoming not only aware of voice searches, but they’re becoming more at home with them. More searchers are being trained to search using their voices, and are becoming more “conversational” with search and mobile devices.
Because more searches are being initiated by voice, there are some important content and SEO implications to take into consideration. Plus, these queries are going to become more transactional in time. More virtual assistants are going to allow bookings and conversations using voice.