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Confirmed! The 2020 Voice Search Ranking Factors
Rebecca Appleton • 9 September 2020
What we have learnt about voice search in 2020
Any website eager to grow its traffic and target relevant visitors can no longer afford to ignore voice search. Each year, voice search gains more and more fans – to the point that right now, around 20% of global search users regularly use voice search, and of that 20%, 58% of users will turn to voice search when they’re looking for a local business.
SEM Rush has just released its annual Voice Search Ranking Factors study to help you tap into that potential and within it, given lots of hints as to how the various algorithms work and what you need to do to rise to the top of the search results. Here’s everything that we’ve learned…
The trio of assistants
Voice search users tend to turn to one of three major search assistants. They are Siri, which is from Apple and has 36% market share, Google Assistant which also holds a 36% market share and Amazon Alexa which has a 25% market share. In fourth place is Microsoft’s Cortana, but it holds a scant 19% of market share so unless you are going heavy on voice search SEO, it likely isn’t worthwhile focusing too much attention on Cortana’s algorithm.
Average answer length
One interesting thing to note from the research is that across the board, the average answer length is 23 words. This suggests that responses will be fairly detailed and helpful to the end user.
Voice assistants are getting smarter
One positive take away from the ranking factors study is that voice search assistants are getting smarter. This indicates that the algorithms are doing a better job of understanding both the search intent and your content. From that, we can extrapolate that traffic landing on site from a voice search will be reasonably well informed and qualified. Today, just 6.6% of questions go unanswered, something that is likely to decline next year as technology gets ever more sophisticated.
Google Assistant rankings are driven by local SEO
The good news if you are hoping to improve your Google Assistant voice search prominence is that you really don’t need to learn a whole new set of SEO techniques. The ranking factors study shows that Google voice search results are driven by its local SEO rankings. This means that if you focus in on good local SEO tactics, such as encouraging your clients to leave you rankings and maintaining a strong Google My Business listing, your voice search results should naturally improve.
Siri rankings are heavily influenced by Yelp
Yelp is found to be the most influential of voice search ranking factors for Siri. To improve your voice search results on Siri, you’ll therefore need to sit down and polish up your Yelp profile. This means, most crucially, being proactive about generating as many five star reviews as you can, ensuring all business information is completed and accurate, upload images and have a keyword optimised business description.
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