Personal voice-enabled assistants such as the revolutionary Apple Siri, the Amazon Alexa and Echo, and Microsoft’s Cortana have taken the tech world by storm. Users can now engage directly with the Web using only their voices. What was first seen as a novelty when the technology was introduced in 2010 by Apple has now been adopted by young and old alike. As many as 45% of all mobile device users engage with their devices through voice searching, with the higher percentages of specific tasks skewed towards teenage users.
Read about Cortana voice commands, speech recognition, and inking here: https://t.co/y5WCbZqWEC pic.twitter.com/RXGWyVURr6— Microsoft Developer (@msdev) July 15, 2016
Search engine giant Google recently announced that they were getting into the voice search game. While voice searching has been available on Android-powered mobile devices for several years, Google had not rolled out a specific device to compete with Echo or the branded voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. That all changed in May, 2016, when Google unveiled Google Home, a small cylindrical device that houses the Google assistant. It provides users with the ability to conduct searches using voice alone, automates and manages everyday tasks around the home or office, and streams music linked to Google Play services.
Digital marketers need to know that voice assistants of these kinds have changed the marketing landscape dramatically. New techniques must be implemented in order to leverage the inherent power of voice assistant devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo.
Of crucial concern to marketers is that there is currently no way to access data on how voice search is used or how to optimize web content for the devices that employ voice searching. Besides generalized averages on what types of search queries and tasks are being conducted with voice assistants, detailed information illustrating trends and specific data sets are not available and may not be for the foreseeable future. It is unclear whether third-party analytic applications will at some point be able to gather and review user data from these devices.
Secondly, not every business model is compatible with the power given to users with voice search. Although the idea behind voice search is to give users the ability to handle everyday tasks using only their voices, some content publishers have learned that Google does not allow control over how that content is used and displayed. Digital marketers have discovered that short-term traffic to websites may improve in voice search, but over the long term as the technology and usage improves, sites that depend on advertising may be adversely effected. This has particular implications for sites that offer unique content in the form of facts and statistics; without being able to control how Google Home answers user queries, site owners may see a reduction in visits over time.
A consideration that many digital marketers have not taken into account is how their clients’ branding could be affected by voice search. Traditionally, voice assistants have struggled with rendering resource names made up of initials, acronyms, or fabricated words. A good example is that of ESPN, the sports news site.
As mentioned by Comcast, a recent innovation had been developed by the company in the form of a voice activated remote control.Chris Hardwick loves the X1 Voice Remote. Like really loves it. Take the X1 Challenge and see how XFINITY stacks up.https://t.co/oU689wjlaB— XFINITY (@XFINITY) March 31, 2016
Until fairly recently, Google’s voice assistant rendered it as an unintelligible word, not as an acronym as intended. Marketers must make efforts to optimize branding to avoid these types of errors as voice search gains more users. Since there is currently not a solution on the horizon, such as the assistance of a third-party app to render names correctly, it’s a concern to keep in mind.
The final, and perhaps most critical, consideration is how Google Home will integrate all the varying data and resources for the end user. Google has claimed that in the development process for their assistant that they have end-to-end solutions in place. What this means for marketers is unclear. Will voice searches related to products or service require payment using a Google-approved product like Wallet or Android Pay? How will Google’s assistant deal with competitive apps, such as those like the car-sharing services Uber, Lyft, and HyreCar? How about paid listings? Will marketers be able to pay to be listed for the service or product their client offers to customers? All of these questions pose unique challenges as the landscape changes. Google may or may not play nicely with other e-commerce providers like Amazon or payment systems like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. In addition, local search directories like Urbanspoon, Yelp, and many others may get cut out of the conversation entirely in favor of Google’s own reviewing tools.
The future of voice search and voice-enabled assistants is exciting, yet unclear, especially when it comes to digital marketing efforts. Online marketers must remain flexible to the changes yet to come in hopes of leveraging the awesome power of voice assistants.
