No one knows for sure what’s happening with voice search, or how it will affect SEO in the future, contended Patrick Reinhart in this informative talk. He believes that preparing for a voice-enhanced future is less about people and more about how systems create searches.
Overview
- Speaker’s name: Patrick Reinhart
- Job role and company: Sr. Director, Digital Strategies at Conductor, Inc.
- Website: https://www.conductor.com/
- Twitter profile: @askreinhart
- LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickreinhart/
- Link to the slides:
What was the talk about?
The SEO industry has a habit of getting distracted by shiny objects, and Patrick Reinhart sees voice search as the shiniest object around at the moment. In truth, most people don’t use voice search much at all — they use voice command to play music, store notes, etc. There isn’t much reason to focus on voice search. Success is unclear, and other improvements matter more.
How do people really like to shop? @askreinhart says it’s not via a smart speaker – those are used more for setting timers and playing music…
? Physical store 62.34%
? Website 26.27%
? Mobile device 7.56%
? None of these 3.24%
? Smart speaker 0.58%#brightonSEO— TelegraphSEO (@TelegraphSEO) April 12, 2019
Fave quote
On voice search success:
“There’s absolutely no way to measure it, and I will fight you on this. Come over and we can argue about it — I love a good argument. Every time someone asks me “How can I win at voice search?” I say “I can’t tell you that, and no-one else can, because there’s absolutely no legitimate way to measure it.””
Potential impact on the industry
Reinhart noted that we’ll eventually need to optimise content for mechanically-generated searches stemming from broader user input. For instance, you might say “find me somewhere to eat” and your AI assistant might dip into your recorded preferences to create a custom search specifically suiting your needs.
Key takeaways
- Don’t bother trying to measure voice search performance. You can’t (yet).
- Voice search doesn’t matter too much today, but it might one day.
- The key will be IoT devices capable of taking action and doing research.
