Google My Business Insights Data Doesn’t Include Voice Search

Local SEO  |     |  

Google My Business provides incredible insights for local-based companies. Because of these insights, these companies are able to optimize how they reach and engage with their customers. Google My Business is meant to provide as much data as possible; however, we recently learned that the platform isn’t providing all types of data, yet. Joy Hawkins, a Google My Business Product Expert, shared that data from voice searches is not being shared. Check out her tweet below.

The Future of Web Searches

Voice-based data relating to web searches is becoming more important. This is because we now live in the age of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana, and other AI virtual assistants. People weren’t using these voice assistants much five years ago. Siri launched in 2001. Alexa and Cortana both launched in 2014. You get the point.

As the use of these services becomes more widespread, the search data will become even more important. Let’s say, in 10 years, half of your search traffic will come from the traditional way: people typing their search query in Google. Now, let’s say that the other half of your traffic comes from one of the many voice assistants out there. If you only have data from the traditional method, you’ll be missing out on the other 50% of how people are searching for you.

Optimizing Your Content

Let’s say that you own a men’s barbershop. Half of your traffic comes from searches like “hair cuts for men”, “men’s haircuts”, and “men’s barbershop”. These are the search terms you may find that people are typing to find your business. Now, let’s say that people are using entirely different search terms when they are using a voice assistant.

“Best haircut for guys”, “barbershop for short hair”, “haircuts for teenage guys”—these are more examples of some common search terms which pertain to barbershops. If these search terms are popular when guys use a voice assistant, how will you know if Google My Business isn’t showing the data from voice searches? If you knew that “haircuts for teenage guys” was the number one search term with voice, you would change the wording on your website to reflect the search terms. That’s because Google would realize your website is the most relevant to the search terms being used and show off your website on the front page.

There are three types of metrics in Google My Business: Direct, Branded, and Discovery. Next, read our blog post to learn about what each of them are and how knowing about them will help your business.

Featured photo by Simon on Pixabay