Speech recognition and voice commands for your site
Understand what your customers say in voice revolution era
Many of the smart devices we use every day support speech recognition technology. We use the voice to search for information, buy goods, even manage other devices. The tech giants use voice search and speech recognition technology cleverly, but is it possible to take the opportunity to do a voice search on our site without Google or Facebook? It sounds incredible, but in this article we will talk about how this technology works, whether it will evolve and what changes are expected shortly to online marketing.
Speech recognition is available in almost all mobile devices, and it also works on desktop PCs, smart speakers, home devices, and smart home systems. Most of the Internet of Things devices already have voice recognition, and we already have voice control over cars and their multimedia systems.
But the question is on the agenda — can we add voice search and commands to our website?
The short answer — yes, it’s possible, it’s even free.
Voice recognition for websites
The logical extension is to spread the voice search and start using it more and more in the online space. It is currently available mainly to tech giants. While it may have seemed difficult to use speech recognition for a website until recently, with Voxpow it is quite easy.
Several articles on the Internet tell you how to add voice search and voice recognition to a website, but they are not exhaustive and up-to-date, you need programming skills, or they just don’t work well enough.
We created Voxpow.com, the first online tool to add website-level speech recognition.
The abbreviation Voxpow comes from Vox — voice, and Pow — power. It is a tool that allows you to use voice power quite easily and for free. In fact, for correct operation, it uses the best machine learning algorithms for speech recognition, reaching over 95% percent accuracy in over 100 languages.
Installation is straightforward. You only need to register on the site and put a small code snippet in the HTML content or specifically the body tag. From now on — the user must give their consent and permission to use the microphone and then can use the service.
There are some additional benefits to paid versions:
- search statistics;
- word search report and URL analysis;
- NLP module.
The system is designed so that the code snippets are distributed worldwide for maximum fast loading.
We have a clear ambition to change the way users navigate web sites by giving them the freedom to use their voice to search and enter content.
Voice recognition technology
Generally speaking, voice control has two types of interaction:
voice commands: “Call your uncle,” “Call me a taxi,” etc.
voice search: “Who won the match,” “Where to order pizza?”
Voice search is analogous to regular search queries but created by voice.
Voice commands — interaction with special devices and programs, and more recently with websites
Both are important to consider when promoting products — a significant part of voice commands are also search-oriented; that is, people can search for a product or service on the Internet.
If your device has a voice search feature, you can enter search queries without using the keyboard. Also, you can search for information, products, services, assign commands to e-helpers, etc.
When a voice request is made, the ASR converts the audio signal to text. The search engine or applications then process it and output the corresponding result.
The processing of a voice request is done in four stages:
Filtration — the desired phrase is separated from the noise cloud. This is necessary to eliminate external interference.
Digitalization — sound waves are converted into code to be suitable for processing by computing.
Analysis — the data obtained is processed, compressed, and prepared for identification.
Identifying Template Data — The query is compared with examples from the database and search history to show specific words and phrases.
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One of the most modern speech recognition systems belongs to Google. The exciting thing here is that it can translate phrases. Already, AI can recognize accents and intonations, with Google’s speech recognition accuracy estimated at 95% and not inferior to that of humans.
Yandex has its own Yandex SpeechKit Speech Recognition System, which is used in more than 400 applications. Voice search is available in Navigator, City, Maps, and the browser. Besides, the free voice search widget, “Yandex.Stroka” is available. Also, the Russian company is actively implementing its voice assistant Alice in browsers and electronic devices.
Google and Yandex systems operate based on artificial intelligence and the use of neural networks. They are educated continuously and improved. Artificial Intelligence collects data from millions of samples and creates models based on them. Subsequently, all new queries are compared with these templates, achieving a remarkable level of accuracy.
Voice Search and Assistants work on smartphones with Google Assistants, Yandex Alice, Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Samsung Bixby, as well as in the smart columns of Google Home, Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod and more. With the help of the voice assistant, you can define or turn on a song, find out the time, make a route, call a taxi, find the nearest cafe or take some action on your computer.
With the new voice search service within a website, they can also perform simple site-level searches, fill in long text boxes with voice, and send commands for easy management.
How to use voice control
According to Google research, 57% of US teens and 43% of adults use voice search at least once a day. Most of all, voice search is preferred during cooking, watching TV, and other such situations, when it is difficult to type text in the usual way, and additional effort is required.
The study was commissioned by Google and conducted by Northstar Research, a global consulting firm. For over 13 years, she has been researching voice search habits on the smartphones of 1,400 Americans (400 teens ages 13–17 and 1,000 adults over 18).
These statistics are indicative of the benefits of voice search. The tendency is to increase these rates, as more and more people will begin to use these facilities actively.
More statistics
- experts predict voice search to be one of the top 3 SEO trends in 2020;
- 62 million people in the US currently use voice assistants;
- according to MindMeld data, in 2015, the number of voice requests reached 50 billion a month;
- higher visibility found that 27% of respondents use voice assistants every day, and also use this technology at least once a week;
- back in 2016, Google said that 20% of all Google search engine searches were done by voice;
- in 2018, Google Assistant operated on 400 million devices worldwide. And this figure is only increasing;
- according to the Global Web Index, 25% of people aged 16–24 use voice search from mobile devices;
- 25% of searches in the Windows 10 taskbar are based on voice, according to Purna Virji.
Impact on business
In early 2017, the Higher Visibility marketing agency published statistics on voice search usage. According to him, more than half of the respondents use search while driving. In part, this suggests that voice search will primarily affect local queries, that is, local businesses.
For example, a user asked, “Ok, Google, where can I eat pizza?” In response, the voice assistant will advise you to visit your nearest venue. If you are a business owner and you are not on Google My Business, you will not be on the map, and the system will not recommend you.
In April 2018, Bright Local conducted a survey that most often saw consumers search for cafes and restaurants, grocery stores, food delivery, clothing stores, and hotels. At the same time, 58% of users use voice search to find information related to a particular area. Over the last 12 months, 46% of voice search users have been searching for local businesses daily. Generally, they are interested in address, telephone, contacts, ways to get there, and opening hours.
To get into the voice search engine results, your site needs to be specially optimized. How to do this — we will talk in a separate article.
Forecasts
- according to a PWC survey, 71% of users searching the web would prefer to type text out loud rather than manually;
- by 2022, voice-assisted purchases will reach $ 40 billion. To date — only $ 3 billion;
- Comscore estimates that by 2020, 50% of inquiries will be made out loud;
- 22% of Americans using voice assistants have purchased something with their help;
- Microsoft’s Cortana Voice Assistant has 133 million monthly users, according to Microsoft / Tech Radar;
- a Voicebot report shows that nearly 20% of US adults have smart columns.
We can assume that the trend will only intensify — which means that it is worth preparing in advance. The increasing number of digital assistants and smart devices can turn voice input into a valuable business promotion channel.
If you own a website, be sure to check out and sign up for Voxpow.com for free. You will be able to take advantage of the latest trends in voice search, speech recognition, and provide immense convenience to the users of your website. Forever free.
