Fresh Voice Search Ranking Report Released

View the report online

Since 2018, we have been tracking 15,000 voice searches on the Google Assistant. Results have been published publicly and have allowed us to keep track of how the Google Assistant answers different voice searches from a wide variety of verticals.

In this sixth update to the report, we’ve moved over to an online dashboard to visualise the results rather than the previous static PDF documents.

We’ve included a number of different charts and data points in the dashboard. Our paid Voice Search Ranking Reports for clients have eight pages of unique reports, which include with added data, insights and access to the raw data too.

Moving to an online dashboard means charts are interactive, you can file the results by vertical. Either selecting all, some or just one vertical at a time.

You can also chart the top ranking domain over time, which tracks which domain is most frequently being referenced by the Google Assistant.

This report is just a snapshot of the type of data we can pull using our voice search ranking reports. From these reports, we are able to generate an optimisation plan for clients to improve their visibility on voice results.

Insights from the Voice Search 2019 Q4 Update

1. Slight improvement overall by the Google Assistant to answer questions

Overall, across the 15,000 key phrases, Google was able to improve its ability to answer questions.  In the last quarter, Google was able to answer 57.18% of questions, in this recent update Google was able to answer 58.8% of questions.

In Q2 2019, Google was able to answer a whopping 66.99% of questions, the highest we have recorded so far.

Improvement overall was driven by Google’s increased use of three types of results: Knowledge Graph, News Playback, Short ABR + Link to App (Read our guide on Google voice result types to find out more about these types of voice results).

Over the past two years we have seen Google increasing / decreasing types of results due to wider search algorithm changes and testing of the Google Assistant platform.

2. Increased preference on Wikipedia to provide results

In the previous two updates, we have seen Google’s increasing use of Wikipedia to provide the answer for voice results. In this latest update, there was a huge increase from 270 results in Q3 2019 to 530 in Q4.

Google’s increase use of wikipedia over time

We can split the 530 key phrases where the Google Assistant uses Wikipedia for voice results into three types;

1. 341 new answers
   • In the previous batch, the Google Assistant wasn’t able to answer / answered in a different way, it can now and uses Wikipedia as the source.

For example “white russian cocktail” we can see that Google was unable to answer for the previous batches

The other common trend we have seen is Google changing from a definition to a Wikipedia result.

1. 115 same
   • No change from the last batch, Google Assistant continues to use Wikipedia
2. 74 taken from another domain
   • The Google Assistant used a different website but now switched to Wikipedia as the source

This increase of “new answers” will be due to Google’s search algorithm improving its ability to extract information from Wikipedia to create answer boxes / knowledge graph items.

• Google changing / refining how results are given

We’ve also seen subtle changes in the way that the Google Assistant answer questions. For example, location results now mention a category of the type of location event, even if you didn’t use the phrase.

For example,  with the key phrase “best place to buy cereal,”the Google Assistant now mentions “Supermarket”.

We can also see Google skipping back and forth between the best way to give out results when the result has multiple items. For example, this key phrase, “what first car should I buy?”, we can see Google uses a standard answer box in Q3 2018. 

This is followed by a short answer box reading out five of the ten best cars, before asking the user if they want to hear more. In the last update, it read out seven and then sent a link to your phone with the other three…

Everytime the Google Assistant pulled information from carbuyer.co.uk/reviews/recommended/best-first-cars.

Here two possible areas are causing the adjustment; how Google is pulling information from web pages may change the way the information is given out. Secondly, the Google Assistant is setup to vary the way the information is read out the user, it then tracks which method is the most useful for the user and adjusts accordingly.

To view the report online head over to our whitepaper page to view.