Voice Search Facts and Statistics: Where Things Stood in 2018

Voice search is becoming a bigger part of daily life. Let’s look at a set of voice search statistics and facts, drawn from an infographic compiled by SEO Tribunal.

Voice Search: Present or Future?

Human-machine interaction has fascinated us for decades, as countless science fiction stories show.

Twenty years ago, before smartphones existed, who could have imagined that we would simply ask a device a question out loud and get an answer back, also out loud, and instantly?

Voice search is changing our habits, and it’s about to change how we approach SEO as well. The way we talk to a search engine is different depending on whether we type a query or speak it. Google has even published guidelines for quality voice answers.

Need to get your website ready for voice search? Contact us.

Voice Search by the Numbers

Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa: not long ago, voice search seemed like a distant possibility. Surprisingly, it’s already part of the present. Here are some of the facts and statistics:

• 25% of searches on Windows 10 are voice searches.
• 52.8% of voice search users use it while driving.
• 52% use voice search to find deals, and 48% to get information and advice.
• 61% of voice search users say it’s easier when their hands are busy, and 30% find it faster than typing.
• Unsurprisingly, millennials use the technology most (35.8%), followed by Gen X (16.7%), with older users bringing up the rear (9.9%).
• Voice search is used most often on smartphones (66% of men, 55% of women), followed by computers (53% of men, 30% of women), tablets (49% of men, 31% of women), and smart speakers (46% of men, 26% of women).
• 65% of smart speaker owners say they can’t imagine life without their smart speaker.
• Between 20% and 25% of smartphone searches are voice searches.
• A widely quoted forecast at the time predicted that half of all searches would be voice searches by 2020.

These figures come from SEO Tribunal’s 2018 infographic of 106 voice search facts and statistics, which gathers numbers from a range of earlier studies. For the wider picture that year, see our mobile marketing statistics for 2018.

Preparing Your Website for How People Search

Référenceur is a French-speaking digital marketing agency from Belgium and Luxembourg that works with U.S. businesses remotely, through video calls, shared screens, and monthly reporting. If you want your site to show up when people ask questions out loud or to an AI assistant (the focus of our AI search optimization (GEO) work), request a free assessment.