"Alexa, Be Quiet!"

60% of smartphone users who use voice search have only been using it within a year. I’ve experienced this recent trend myself with conversational search versus traditional keyword search. Mainly due to my own laziness (and safety) when searching from my mobile phone. I realize with more and more voice recognition or speech detection software enabled devices, it’s inevitable that our search best practices will continue to evolve.

The real eye opener came when recently visiting my mother (who just turned 80). While socializing in the living room, her new Amazon Alexa personal assistant was a hot topic. Ironically placed conveniently next to the old radio on the side table. She loves it. I almost cracked up when she started yelling at it to “be quiet” when the music volume was too high. It was perfect. And, it worked. Crazy good stuff from a user experience.

But what about in business? If search criteria requires a new conversational tone or human-related language, think about all the work in front of us marketers for re-calibrating the keyword exercises or the time needed maintaining a view of the competitive landscape for SEO and search rankings.

My keywords of advice: "Tie down your SMEs and customers for input with updated conversational search terms they would use when searching for the products and services you sell." Don’t use what you may think would be accurate based on recent manual search results. You can easily fall back into old habits by using words stuck in your comfort zone.

A few

recent stats from HubSpot on Voice Search:

19% of people use Siri at least daily. (HubSpot, 2015)

37% use Siri, 23% use Microsoft’s Cortana AI, and 19% use Amazon’s Alexa AI at least monthly. (HubSpot, 2015)

20% of search queries on Google's mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches. (Search Engine Land, 2016)

60% of smartphone users who use voice search have begun using it within the past year, with 41% of survey respondents having only begun to use voice search in the past six months. (Search Engine Land, 2015)

43% of mobile voice search users do so because they say it is quicker than going on a website or using an app. (Statista, 2015)

21% of mobile voice search users do so because they say they don't like typing on their mobile. (Statista, 2015)

(Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)