2018 sees an evolution of the digital landscape, with further developments in AI, the introduction of GDPR and even image search. All of which have their own challenges and nuances to fully grasp, but even for an experienced online marketer, the current voice search landscape can also be a little complex with so many assistants, devices, actions, skills, SDK’s and a range of hardware providers.
John Campbell, Head of SEO at digital agency, ROAST explains, “With two massive companies, Google and Amazon, pushing the boundaries and competing for market share, it’s going to interesting how the market develops.
Despite this surge in the importance of Voice Search, we’ve seen little development across it’s tools and reporting. Many brands are in the dark about how their websites perform on voice search. We have developed Voice Search Ranking reports to help our clients have a better understanding of the landscape and their options with voice search.”
One major problem SEO teams have faced is reporting on voice search. How much traffic to your site is via voice searches, is my website being referenced on voice searches, do users convert at a higher rate than normal typed searches? Although there have been some initial conversations from Google on the reporting of voice search as 2018 starts there is currently no way track anything related to voice search.
With this gap in reporting on voice search ROAST have developed a first in market Voice Search Ranking Reports. This tool allows us to report back on which websites are being referenced in answers given by the voice search assistant. Using automation and software, we run batches of queries across our test key phrase sets and clients. The data retrieved allows us to analyse which domains and URLs have the highest levels of visibility across a set of key phrases. We can record the domain and URL used in the answer, detect if it changes or if the information read out to the user alters.
Using the data from the Voice Search Ranking Report we can create top-line views, such as the top ranking domain, compare performance with competitors and track the number of voice search results achieved over time. Reports be further advanced by comparing to answer boxes appearing in featured snippet answer boxes on web search results. Does the voice search result match the answer box on the same key phrase?
While conducting example reports we’ve found a few nuances with voice search previously unknown:
- The assistant might not read out your result, even if your website provides Google with the answer box result on web search. This happened to 26 per cent of searches in the example report
- When a result is given we found one in four of the websites referenced in the voice search answer will be different to the website referenced in the answer box result
- Similar to how web results have different types of answers (web, images, video, featured snippets) voice search has different types of results. We’ve found six variants so far
- We’ve seen examples of generic key phrases promoting the opening on third party actions
Further insights into our findings can be read in a whitepaper and you can download a sample report here. Website owners can also sign up for a free report.
The current Voice Search Ranking Report works with Google Assistant powered devices such as the Google Home or Google Mini speaker. Work is underway to report for Amazon Alexa powered devices.
We believe that ROAST’s Voice Search Ranking Reports are the first step towards aiding marketers understanding the impact on voice search.