Where does my brand rank on voice search?

FAQs

• Voice search is going to be half of all searches by 2020 isn’t it?

  No. This is quite incorrect. This statement has been used in hundreds of sales decks to push the potential of voice but it’s not true. At least it won’t be in 2020.

  The quote comes from Andrew Ng, a former Chief Scientist at Baidu is quoted with saying this but he actually claimed in 2016 that half of searches would be voice AND image led. Since then, there have been no actual stats produced to show that this is likely to happen with the most recent details provided from Google in 2016 suggesting that 20% of searches on mobile were carried out with voice. Even with small levels of growth, this potentially represents millions of searches each day that brands can ‘rank’ for.

• Voice results are just the first result of the search engine right?

  Yes and no. The common theory is the Google just reads out the top result from the search engine results pages whenever a voice search is carried out. However, research from Backlino in 2017 showed that whilst this is generally the case, this only happens about a third of the time. Therefore, getting your results read out on voice is more than a traditional SEO job as more factors are at play. Read their blog post for a great amount of insight into what makes a website ‘rank’ on voice.

  Our research also shows that at least 20% of results that are returned from voice are NOT the ones listed anywhere in the SERPS...

• How much Share of Voice cost?

  We’ve priced Share of Voice competitively to give you access to some of the best voice technology in the world. Costs start from just £50 per month for smaller project up to £400 per month for agencies, all available on a month on, month off payment plan. We also offer bespoke pricing available for bluechip and International businesses. To find out more visit our pricing page.

• Do I need to keep using Share of Voice after a month?

  The main voice platforms are still in their infancy and changing all of the time. Our assumption before creating Share of Voice was that the results returned would be fairly static and not change that much. However, having analysed thousands of voice results, we know that this isn’t the case. The algorithms change just as much as standard SERPS and so requires results to be monitored on a daily basis, especially as more investment goes into the platforms in 2019 and beyond!

• How often do voice results change?

  Like traditional search results, voice search results change regularly. We have been monitoring voice results for months and whilst a lot of results tend to stay static, for now, it is common for results to appear one day and then not the next.

  It is also worth noting that currently the battleground for voice results is very very small compared to traditional SEO with very little attention being paid to voice rankings currently. We expect this to change in the coming years and the data that we offer to help provide insight and support to marketing teams looking to conquer new ground!

• Why do you not always show all of the results returned?

  Our methods for obtaining the results from Alexa and Google is top secret and for us to know and understand. Returning all of the data could potentially result in our processes being compromised and so we have to be careful about the data returned and presented. We do though verify all data by randomly testing results to ensure that they match with the ones that we hear when we test from our own locations across the country.

• What are the main voice speakers in the UK?

  Like the US, there are two main voice speakers in the UK - the Alexa Echo (and its variants) and Google Home. Both use the underlying voice technology in other devices such as the Google Assistant found on Google Android phones and Amazon Fire sticks, tablets and even cars!

  Despite both GOogle and Amazon getting all of the headlines about voice search and technology, the reality is the in the US and UK, Apple & Siri actually have a larger install base. Despite Cortana being available on all modern Windows machines, it still lags behind its rivals.

  In 2018 it was reported that Siri has 1.5x the install base of Google. However, there is no data available on how many searches are carried out on Siri so it is not possible to say how much of the market they might have.

  For this reason, at Share of Voice we have focussed our efforts on the big two players who we know have good search usage, Google and Alexa. Google was reported in 2016 to have ‘20% of mobile searches carried out by voice’ which equates to millions per day while Alexa has the largest home install base and perhaps the best position to capitalise from considering Siri usage hasn’t grown despite a near 5 year head start on the competition.

• How do voice results differ to normal search queries?

  Typical search marketing, both SEO and PPC, revolves around matching against phrases that users type in, either loosely or specifically matching the query. This is because the way we search using a keyboard is still driven from the early days of the web when users were taught to search by dropping ‘filler’ words (e.g. the, and, it etc).

  Several years ago Google realised that there was a trends to more natural language queries which resulted in it changing a lot of its underlying technology (in the Hummingbird update in 2013) to deal with these new behaviours. Since then, users have carried on this growth to ask more how and why queries which has seen a change in both SEO and PPC marketing and a drive towards more ‘ethical’ content - content that users will actually want to read because it is written for people, not machines.

  When it comes to voice search, the data suggests that we are asking questions in the way that we could to another person in that queries are slightly longer and using more natural language. It must be noted that this example was carried out in 2016 and so thing are likely to have evolved in that time and that no official data has ever been released by Google or Microsoft.

  Source - https://moz.com/blog/how-voice-search-will-change-digital-marketing-for-the-better

  However, from our own observations and anecdotal evidence, it appears queries are much more ‘human’ and so when checking your coverage on voice (or, your share of voice!) it is definitely worth asking the same thing several ways to try to emulate your customers. For example, if you were to order a flight to Paris, you could ask

  ‘Can i get from heathrow to paris’

  ‘Book me a flight from heathrow to paris’

  ‘When can i fly to paris from london’

  ‘What is the best price to fly to paris next Monday’

  There are potentially dozens of ways to ask the same or very similar things which all need to be explored and understood which is where our tool and its automated suggestions can come in to help!