JOHN CAMPBELL Head of SEO, ROAST
SEO
reasons, one being that “Google and Amazon want to keep this data and information to themselves, at this moment in time, while the product is growing. If they were giving out data and the amount of people searching and interacting on these voice devices wasn’t as high as assumed, then there could be a kickback in the market. “The other side of things could be
it’s just two different departments in Google. You’ve got Google Smart Speaker devices which is more hardware led, and then traditionally there’s the team that looks after reporting on Search Console and AdWords, which are more of a data marketing team. It might be the case that those two teams haven’t really managed to get collaboration with each other or link the two products together.” This lack of support from the
market leaders is waning. “We know that there is something coming in the future, because Google is asking website owners and marketers what they would like to see in reporting metrics for voice search,” says Campbell, suggesting voice search-
related assistance from Google is on the horizon.
Should You Track Your Voice Search Performance?
As voice search becomes more popular, businesses may be inclined to start tracking their performance just as they do for web searches. However, as Campbell explains, investing in voice search optimisation might not be worthwhile for everyone. Take a company like Skyscanner, for example. “Voice search isn’t going to be great for them because Google is referring to their own flight search.” Similarly, “Google has their own database of medical questions, so even though you could have an answer box opportunity on the web, when you’re going via voice search Google is circumnavigating those answer boxes and they’re using their own databases.” Campbell believes that continual
tests are needed to establish the different key phrases that cause Google to avoid answer boxes, and use their own database. Then marketers will be able to see whether devoting
What % of Assistants Matched the Answer Box?
time and money to their voice search ranking is actually worth it.
Adapting Your Strategy
Voice search clearly works in a different way to traditional web searches, and changes will need to be made to marketing strategies to accommodate for these differences. “Obviously users will hear the
answers audibly, so the type of copy that we’ll use, and the language, may change. We’ve also started to notice some nuances like if we use full stops or commas in our content, then the voice search will stop, so it’s important to try and think about how we structure our sentences.”
Off the back of their report, ROAST’s
clients are interested in creating Actions for Google Home, which are things people can ask the Google Assistant to do, to interact with their content.
What Does The Future Hold?
ROAST are currently working on expanding their research into Google Home devices. “We’re going to be running reports on different verticals on a weekly or monthly basis, so we can track the trends over time.” They will run reports based on key phrase sets including finance, travel, retail, property, and FMCG.
In the long term, ROAST are also developing the same report for Amazon Alexa, which is powered by Bing. It will certainly be interesting to compare the difference between the two market leaders. Campbell predicts the future of voice
DIDN'T MATCH 26 %
search reporting will involve attribution modelling, to find out “If somebody asks a question related to your brand, do they then come back later on to purchase from you, or visit your website, or visit your physical store location…if I was a business owner, that’s what I would be interested in.”
weareroast.com
39 issue 31 spring 2018
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