In recent times, there has been an upsurge in the number of smartphone users across India, thanks to the technological advancements that connect people across the globe and offer services on-the-go. The advent of internet in mobiles and tablets has propelled Google Search into handheld devices and thereby helped users to find stuff on the move such as looking for a nearby landmark or locating a store nearby.
The searches coming in through mobile and tablets are reportedly contributing to more than 50 percent of the online traffic while elaborate search queries such as How, What, Where and Why have increased by 60 percent, according to a recent post by Nixan Crasto, Vice President of Earned Media (SEO and Social) at Performics.Resultrix.
With the consumer search behaviour changing drastically over time, the shift to Voice Search seems like an obvious choice. This is true given the busy schedule in today's modern world and the need to multitask while on the move.
It would be more convenient to ask a query than manually typing it on the phone if you are driving a car or riding a bike through the traffic-ridden streets.
The concept of voice search was introduced way back in 2011 with iOS 5 and later it laid the foundation to the golden era of digital personal assistants in the form of Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa and finally Google's voice assistant which is the enhanced version of Google Now.
The corporate bigwigs are keen on investing a fortune in the development of virtual personal assistant and voice-enabled search technologies that can elevate user experience with search engines to a whole new level. The ongoing research and development in the field of machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing, has given the much-needed impetus for search engines to offer intelligent answers to all user queries in real time.
According to Comscore, voice search has seen a growth rate of 20 percent globally on an annual basis while the Google voice search queries have shot up by 35 times in 2016 in contrast to those in 2008. Consequently, the growth rate for voice-enabled queries is projected at 50 percent of all mobile searches in 2020.
Google has already made rapid strides in voice search technology that can understand Indian dialects and accents or perform English voice search in an Indian accent. The search engine giant is all poised to support 22 native languages in India as a recent study from KPMG suggests around 70 percent of Indians believe that search queries in native language are more reliable than English.
Is Indian market ready to embrace the change?
Despite the tech-savvy Indian consumer market, there is a bigger challenge of introducing a fail-proof search strategy that supports elaborate queries regardless of the native language being used. As Crasto notes, the voice assistant needs to understand both the context as well as the language itself to deliver accurate search results.
Unlike text searches, the voice searches are more specific and need-based. For instance, a text query could read something like 'Bengaluru air fare' while the voice search will be more elaborate and specific like 'what is the price of economy class air ticket to Bengaluru?'.
Nixan Crasto has also detailed some tips for the marketers to grow the right content strategy that could cater to everyday user queries via Google Voice Search, regardless of the product or service or language being used.
