The coming years we will see more and more brands optimizing for Voice Search. It is no wonder as humans speak about 150 words a minute yet only type 40 words per minute. 28% of people in 2017 think voice search is a more accurate way of searching.
With the advent of wearable technology, we all know where this is going.
This year Google’s voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant and also the integration of Google Assistant into our TVs. December 2016 saw Amazon’s Echo products become their most popular product over the holiday period.
The Future
“50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” according to ComScore
“About 30% of searches will be done without a screen by 2020.” via Mediapos
“We estimate there will be 21.4 million smart speakers in the US by 2020” according to Activate
The Present
“Google voice search queries in 2016 are up 35x over 2008” according to Google trends via Search Engine Watch
“40% of adults now use voice search once per day” according to ComScore
“Cortana now has 133 million monthly users” according to Microsoft/Tech Radar
“In May 2016, 1 in 5 searches on an Android app in the USA were through speech” according to @kpcb
“25% of 16-24s use voice search on mobile” via Global Web Index
“41% of people using voice search have only started in the last 6 months” according to MindMeld
“60% of people using voice search have started in the last year” according to MindMeld
“11% of people using voice search started more than 3 years ago” according to MindMeld
19% of people use Siri at least daily. (HubSpot, 2015) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
“9% of users said that they’ve used AI personal assistants like Siri or Cortana in the past day” according to AYTM
“45% of those who have used AI personal assistants said they’ve used Siri. 33% have used Google Now. 27% used Microsoft’s Cortana. 10% have used Amazon Echo or Alexa.” via AYTM
“1 in 5 online adults have used voice search on their mobile in the last month” via Global Web Index
“37% use Siri, 23% use Microsoft’s Cortana AI, and 19% use Amazon’s Alexa AI at least monthly.” (HubSpot, 2015) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
“We estimate that 325.8 million people used voice control in the past month” according to Global Web Index (that’s almost 10% of the online population according to Internet Stats).
“We estimate that the retail giant (Amazon) has sold 5.1 million of the smart speakers in the U.S since it launched in 2014” according to CIRP via Geekwire.
“Amazon sold approximately 2 million units in the first nine months of 2016” according to CIRP
“Amazon sold 4.4 million Echo units in its first full year of sales” according to
“25% of searches on Windows 10 taskbar are voice. On desktop!” according to Purna Virji
The Intent
“Mobile voice-related searches are 3X more likely to be local-based than text” via Search Engine Watch
“Home Alone and Elf were the most requested 2016 holiday movies with Alexa.” via Amazon
“Customers use Amazon Echo for many purposes, with one-third using it as an information provider responding to questions and over 40% as an audio speaker for listening to streaming music.” according to CIRP.
“Nearly 50% of people are now using voice search when researching products.” via Social Media Today
“High consumer usage of voice assistants in autos (51%) and household (39%) indicates increased comfort with the technology” – according to Activate via WSJ.
“Google’s AI has been reading nearly 3,000 romance novels in order to improve its conversational search abilities” via Click Hub
The (current) Errors
“outside 35% of normal recognition errors, 31% were noise related and 22% were pronunciation related” according to Research Gate
“Today, speech recognition word error rate is 8 percent.” via Bruce Clay
———————————————————————————————————-
Christian Thomson is CEO and founder of Marwick Internet Marketing a digital agency specializing in Search Marketing and the Canadian Internet Marketing Conference.
LinkedIn
08/01/2017
Christian is a British-born entrepreneur and founder of Marwick. For over 19 years, Christian has successfully helped businesses excel in digital marketing. Founded in 2012, Marwick has grown from a start-up to the 11th Fastest Growing Company in Canada in 2020 and expanded into the UK in 2019.