Voice search is one of the greatest developments in Google’s history and is one of the fastest-rising trends nowadays.
Presently, 50% of the searches on the web are voice-activated. Moreover, the number of digital voice assistants is expected to reach 8.4 billion units by 2024.
It might seem to be a quick jump in its popularity. But not all are aware of the fact that it took Google over a decade to reach where it is today.
In this article, you will learn about the entire journey of Google voice search in the world of the web.
Here is the history of the Google voice search:
When Did Google Voice Search Start?
It rolled out in 2008 summer (USA) and was introduced in the BlackBerry Pearl version of Google Maps for mobile phones. The BlackBerry Pearl users were the first to search by speaking to the device instead of typing in the search box.
The move was revolutionary as it offered its user an interactive handsfree experience for the very first time. It was just the beginning of voice search, which still demanded a lot of development.
Related: Voice Search Google: The Complete Guide
How Has Google Voice Search Evolved?
Google planned to expand the area of application of voice search to other devices and apps as well. Here is the timeline of Google voice search evolution:
2008 (November)
Google added voice search to Google Mobile App on iPhone. With the little update, Google included voice search also to iPod touch, which required a third-party microphone.
2009 (August)
T-Mobile partnered with Google and launched the MyTouch 3G. The specialty of the phone was the one-touch Google Voice Search that rolled many eyeballs.
2010 (March)
YouTube started using a beta-grade derivation of Google Voice Search. It provided optional automatic text caption annotations of videos in case the annotations are absent. The feature was included to benefit the hearing-impaired users. Now, it is available for English-speaking users only.
Related: How to Turn On Google Voice Search
2011 (June)
On June 14, at the Inside Google Search event, Google announced the launch of voice search on Google.com in the near future. However, the support was limited to the Google Chrome browser only.
2012 (June)
Google unveiled Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on June 27 with improved Google’s search experience, which incorporated the then-new digital assistant Google Now.
Related: Google Voice Search Not Working? Here Is What You Can Do
2012 (October)
The next big move of Google was the release of a new Google Search app for iOS. It was an enhanced and feature-rich Google Voice Search function.
Its functions matched the voice search available in Google’s Android Jelly Bean. The app was the answer to Apple’s Siri voice assistant.
Related: Voice Search Vs Text Search
2014 (August)
Google voice search went through several phases of development for improved user experience. One of the significant developments was the choice of languages for the users.
By now, users could choose up to five languages as their preferred mode of communication with the app.
Initially, the app was available for the U.S. English locale only. Later, it extended its abilities and the commands were recognizable and replied to in other languages. For example, British English, Indian English, French, Filipino, Italian, German, and Spanish.
2016 (May)
Google voice search extended into Google assistant, powered by artificial intelligence. It debuted as part of Google’s messaging app called Allo, which closed in March 2019.
Related: How To Fix Voice Search In YouTube Not Working Issue
2016 (November)
Google released its first device, Google Home under the brand name of Google Nest in the United States in November 2016. It was the line of smart speakers that used the services of Google Assistant to enable users to interact with the device.
2017 (February)
The voice assistant began to be deployed on other Android devices. It included third-party smartphones and Android Wear (now Wear OS). In the same year by the month of May, Google released Google Assistant as a standalone app on the iOS operating system.
2018 (July)
Google announced and released its first Assistant-powered smart displays, which were a combination of smart speakers and video screens.
What is The Technology Behind Google Voice Search?
Google is not too vocal about the technology it uses for voice search or how it creates SERP. However, as per Google updates in recent years, there are two primary factors that impact the voice search results – Hummingbird and BERT.
These two updates, assist the algorithm of Google to understand the meaning of the words spoken to it and get the relevant results. Let’s understand the updates in detail:
Related: Top Voice Search Stats
Google’s Hummingbird Update
In 2017, Google introduced the Hummingbird update. Even if it is called an “update” as if it is an addition to the existing algorithm, it is a complete overhaul. As per Amit Singhal, Hummingbird was the largest rewrite of the algorithm since 2001.
The added algorithm was one of the most significant moves by Google that aimed at interpreting natural language queries. It also helped search engines to understand the context of the words in a search string for delivering more accurate results. In both ways, the searcher’s intent is satisfied better.
The idea behind the Hummingbird update is to help Google search engine to understand the semantics or the intention behind a given search.
The Hummingbird update took several years to mature but played a fundamental role in revolutionizing Google Search. Since it was implemented, there have been several changes layered onto the algorithm.
Google BERT Update
The BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) came in 2019. It is defined as a deep learning algorithm that works on natural language processing, similar to Hummingbird update.
Also, it helps a machine to understand the meaning of words in a sentence, including all the nuances of context, unlike hummingbird.
BERT is a pre-training approach that is capable enough to work with a large text body. It can handle entity recognition, part of speech tagging, and question-answering as components of natural language processes.
In short, BERT is the medium of how Google interprets natural language text received from the web.
Where Does Google Voice Search Stand Today?
Google Voice search came a long way since its first release. There have been many significant improvements to enhance its user experience and to capture a larger section of the market.
Let us see where Google Voice Search stands today.
- Google extended the capabilities of its Assistant not only on its own hardware, instead it partnered with other organizations that deployed Google Assistant on a huge range of devices. It included fridges, geysers, headphones, speakers, and even cars.
- By 2020, Google Assistant was already available on more than 1 billion devices.
- As of now, Google voice search supports 74 of most spoken languages and is increasing.
- Nearly 11.5% of American users of smart speakers like Google Home, claimed they use the device to buy something at least once a month.
- Currently, Google’s voice assistant is available on more than 1 billion devices.
- In 2011, the level of word accuracy rate was between 60 and 80%. The lower accuracy means the rate by which the queries were misinterpreted and resulted in incorrect answers. The word accuracy rate of Google voice search has risen to above 90% and is likely to increase in the near future.
- Google’s Assistant and the Google Home device provide the answers to a user’s query that are the same as the one displayed at the top of Google search results.
Why is Google Voice Search Important in Terms Of SEO?
As already discussed, the easy access to the Voice Assistant in Android phones has encouraged its uses at an incredible pace. People are increasingly using voice search to look for their daily needs.
Considering the scenario after the outbreak of the pandemic, people are more actively using Google Assistant for making purchases and searching open stores near them.
Gradually, it is turning out to be a regular practice. Hence, optimizing your websites as per voice search is a great way to increase your reach to the desired audience.
Related: Voice SEO Guide
How Google Voice Search is Impacting The SEO Strategy?
One primary reason why you should care about optimizing your site especially for voice search is that the pattern it follows to create SERP is different from the text-based search.
Here are the primary reasons how it is different:
- People prefer natural speech patterns while making queries to the devices.
- They naturally use more long-tail keywords for the searches.
- Over half of the searches are coming from smartphones.
- Users carefully read the featured snippet before clicking.
- Queries are now more local search-oriented.
- Users expect a faster page load than ever before.
These factors highly impact the ranking of a site in voice search results. Hence, the existing SEO strategy could be just a half of the effort to get a better ranking.
As a result, focusing on the above-mentioned factors becomes essential to ensure increased chances of ranking well on Google SERP.
Conclusion
Google voice search has been around for over a decade and has developed dramatically in recent years.
With every passing year, voice search is becoming more and more advanced. A lot of smart devices are frequently hitting the market, making voice search increasingly accessible.
It indicates that a greater number of people are going to leverage this useful feature, which will in turn influence the global market growth. It is not limited to improving user experience, but also about increasing your reach to a larger audience.
Therefore, optimizing your content for voice search will pave a path for you to become a part of a growing market.
