In recent years, voice search has grown rapidly, especially after its introduction to mobile phones and smart speakers. Now, businesses are focusing more on voice searches for voice assistants like Hey Google, Bixby, Alexa, Siri, and Cortana to market their product and service, which has compelled marketers to optimize their SEO for voice-based search.
Given below are some of the top voice search stats to help you understand its position in online search and will give you the ideas to develop your SEO strategy.
General Voice Search Statistics
- The global mobile voice traffic reached 55 exabytes in Q3 2020 alone, which is 18.3 exabytes more than the third quarter of 2019. (Statista)
- All most 28% of US households had a minimum of one smart speaker in 2018, indicating a significant household penetration rate of smart speakers in the United States (Statista)
- Almost 38 million US consumers are expected to look to these devices for their shopping capabilities. (eMarketer)
- India has the highest number of voice assistant users with 58.1% of internet users falling between the age group of 16 and 64. Next comes China with 55.7% followed by Indonesia with 51.9% of internet users of the same age group using voice technology on a monthly basis. (Datareportal)
- According to OC&C Strategy Consultants, house penetration for smart speakers is expected to be 55% up by 2022. (OC&C Strategy Consultants)
- Voice search queries were found to be longer than usual text-based searches. The queries include three to five keywords in a row, while text searches have one or two words. (Rediff.com)
- As per Voicebot.ai, more than 45% of UU consumers say they would like to have voice-assistant features in their preferred mobile apps. (Voicebot.ai)
- Around 20% of the adults utilize mobile voice search to look for their requirements at least once a month. (Rediff.com)
- Interestingly, 55% of teenagers use voice search every day. (Rediff.com)
- More than half of consumers in the USA took advantage of voice search to look for information regarding local businesses. Also, 46% of US consumers use voice search daily to find local businesses. (SmallBizTrends)
- Considering the growing popularity of voice search in the USA, its user base is anticipated to reach 122.7 million users by the end of 2021. (eMarketer)
- Nearly, 60% of smartphone users have used voice search at least once between 2019 and 2020. (webmasterreview)
- Mobile voice search on Google is now translated into over 70 languages (Wikipedia)
- By 2021, 1 out of 6 United States households owns a smart speaker. (Forbes)
Related: Voice SEO Guide
Voice Search Devices and Assistants Performance Statistics
- The accuracy rate of Google Assistant was 87.9% in 2018, and ever-increasing since then. (VentureBeat)
- Google Assistant works with 50,000 smart home devices offered by over 10,000 popular brands and still the list is growing. (support.google.com)
- Google Assistant now supports over 400 million devices, which includes TV, appliances, and wearable products.
- In the new AI test, Siri on HomePod answered 52.3% of queries correctly. However, it was able to understand 99.4% of queries accurately. (Reddit.com)
- Alexa by Amazon which had 130 skills has now over 100,000 skills as of September 2019. (Statista)
- Apple is reportedly planning to launch its second generation of HomePod, which is the third smart speaker in 2021. (EconomicTimes)
- Google Assistant was able to understand and speak 30 languages by the end of 2018, which was sufficient to cover 95 percent of Android users. (Theverge)
- Google speech recognition now supports more than 100 languages. Soon Google Assistant will be able to understand all the languages and will answer in the same language it is spoken to. (Google)
- Google announced its new language model, Google MUM in 2021. It is 1000 times more powerful than BERT, can multitask, and can also generate content.
Related: Google MUM Update: All You Need To Know
Voice Search SEO Statistics
- Many online businesses are not optimized yet for voice search. Out of 73,000 business listings, 96% of all businesses had critical errors in the information provided. (Search Engine Watch)
- Your website page’s loading speed significantly determines the success of voice search SEO. On average, the voice search query returns result 52% faster than the text-based query (Innsight.com)
- Over 20% of voice search queries are the combination of only 25 keywords. (Woodchukarts.com)
- A page that ranks in the top 3 results for a query for text-based search has 75% higher chances to rank better in voice search for the same query. (templatemonster.com)
- A content that found space for a featured snippet for a text query has a relatively 40% more chance to rank better in voice search for the same query. (templatemonster.com)
Related: Alexa SEO: Complete Guide
Voice Search Consumer Behaviour Statistics
- 72% of voice-activated speaker owners have done shopping using their devices. (ecommercethesis)
- 44% of people using voice assistants order household products and groceries on a weekly basis using their devices. (ThinkwithGoogle)
- 45% of global internet users have been reported in Jan 2021 to use voice search or voice commands in the last 30 days. (Datareportal)
- More than 50% of smart speaker owners prefer living rooms to place their voice-activated speakers. (Medium)
- 25% of smart speaker consumers keep their devices in their bedrooms and 22% choose their kitchens for the devices. (digitalvidya)
- 52% of users utilize voice search technology when they are driving (social media today)
- According to a global survey done in 2019, almost 57% of consumers and business buyers believed that voice assistants are revolutionary. (Statista)
- 58% of business buyers like using voice search on their devices rather than typing in it. (Statista)
- 65% of users between the age of 25-49 years old talk to their voice-enabled devices every day (PwC)
- Global voice search users comprise more men than women using at least once a month. (Social Media Today)
- As per a study by Uberall, 21% of respondents use voice search on a weekly basis (Search Engine Watch)
- A voice search survey conducted in 2020 reported that 39.4% of internet users in the United States operate a voice assistant minimum once a month. (eMarketers)
- Users talk to voice-activated speakers as if they were human, using courtesy words, such as thank you, please, and even sorry. (Just-AI.com)
- 62% of regular voice-activated speaker users are likely to make purchases through the device. (ThinkwithGoogle)
- 82% of consumers utilize voice search to find out local information, using words like “near me”. Hence, businesses are now incorporating voice search marketing into their SEO strategies. (BrightLocal)
- 53% of voice-activated speaker owners find the device more like a human as if they are talking to a friend. (ThinkwithGoogle)
- Around 51% of the users over the age of 55 years feel that the device gives them delegate power to obtain answers or information instantly. (ThinkwithGoogle)
- Up to 41% of voice device users are said to be concerned about their confidentiality while using voice search, which is why the brands like Amazon and Google are focusing on increasing security measures. (customsoftwarelab)
Voice Commerce Statistics
- Shopping trends are changing now. 20% of voice-based orders are for grocery shopping, 19% for entertainment shopping, 17% for electronics shopping, and 8% of orders are for apparel shopping. (QuoraCreative)
- As of 2020, only 39 apps supported voice-based shopping. (QuoraCreative)
- Voice assistant users were spending 3% of total consumer expenditure via voice assistants in 2018. The figure was expected to rise 18% by 2021. (Capgemini)
- 71% of the consumers who use voice assistants had a highly satisfying experience while using their voice assistants. (Capgemini)
- A study conducted in 2018 reported that shoppers who use the voice search technology would like to spend 500% more than they did in that year via this mode of interaction. (Capgemini)
- Over 30% of US internet users looked for product information or purchased products using a voice assistant. (Invespcro)
- 85% of respondents accepted that they have considered their virtual assistant’s top product recommendation over their own preference for a specific brand. (Invespcro)
- The voice-enabled devices were reported to have a 39% rise year-over-year in online sales. (customsoftwarelab)
- Businesses could lose at least 20% of potential business if they do not optimize their site as per voice search. (Cibirix)
Related: Ecommerce SEO Checklist
Voice Search Device Statistics
- In the United States alone, there are over 110 million virtual assistant users. The software is active mainly in smartphones and smart speakers. (Statista)
- Amazon’s Alexa offered its support to around 60,000 different smart home devices across the world, as of 2019. This is an excellent example of how a voice-based device became popular in a short span. (Statista)
- China and the United States top among countries with the largest number of smart speaker users in 2020. (Statista)
- The global installed base of smart speakers touched almost 320 million units. (Statista)
- More than 15 million smart displays were sold worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2020, 2.5 million more than in the same quarter a year ago. (Statista)
- Around 51% or approximately one in two USA citizens are reported to have already used a voice-based personal assistant on their smartphone at the beginning of 2020. (Statista)
- Almost 24% of the respondents have used voice assistants either on their TV or TV remote. (Statista)
- Amazon smart speakers had a greater penetration rate compared to Google devices in 2018, achieving 68% of smart speaker users. (Statista)
- In Great Britain, 67% of smart speaker owners have a single device, and 11% claim to own three or more devices. (Statista)
- By the fourth quarter of 2020, Amazon owned the largest share of the global smart speaker market, having a total of 28.3% of the market share. (Statista)
- With a share of 22.6% in Q4 2020, Google stands out to be Amazon’s closest competitor. (Statista)
- 65% of Amazon Echo or Google Home owners are now not comfortable enough to move to the keyboard for the online search. (ecommercethesis)
Related: What Is The Need For SEO in Digital Marketing?
Voice Search Forecasts and Predictions
- The industry of smart speakers is forecasted to be worth $40 billion by 2022. (Markets.businessinsider)
- 55% of households are expected to buy voice search devices by 2022. (Reddit)
- As per Canalys’ prediction, smart speakers will outnumber tablets by the end of 2021 in the United States where 1 in 4 households already own at least one smart speaker. (bizwhiznetwork)
- Around 75% of households in the United States will own at least one smart speaker by 2025. (Atlasvpn)
- Almost 18% of the consumer will spend via voice assistants by 2022. (Customsoftwarelab)
- Voice-based ad revenues are anticipated to touch $19 billion by 2022. (Customsoftwarelab)
- The total number of voice assistants across the world will reach 8 billion units by 2023. (Zdnet)
- By 2024, the number of digital voice assistants is forecasted to touch 8.4 billion units, higher than the global population. (Statista)
- The global market size of the smart speaker is expected to surpass $30 billion by 2024. (Gminsights)
- The global voice recognition market will soon touch the $27.16 billion figure by 2025. (Statista)
- The smart speaker penetration for United States households will jump to 55% by 2022. (Reddit)
- UK voice commerce is forecasted to reach £5 billion by 2022. (OC&C Strategy)
- The global voice recognition market size was 10.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. The prediction is that it will grow to 27.16 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. The CAGR from 2020 to 2025 is estimated to be 16.8%. (Statista)
- The installed base of smart speakers across the world is expected to grow to 640 million by 2024. (Statista)
- The voice search devices are expected to generate 27.8 billion U.S. dollars revenue by 2022. (Statista)
Takeaways
Voice search is evolving every day, every minute. The technology coupled with ever-advanced hardware and software broadened its reach to maximum users. Dream technologies like Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have further paved the path for better and improved voice search.
Even if it’s been nearly a decade with a huge user-base, voice search is still considered to be in its early stage, having a major scope of improvement. However, given the significant rise in its popularity, users have already widely accepted it as a reliable mode of online searching. Hence, better not underestimate the power of voice assistants and move forward to optimize your websites for voice-based searches.
