Google Voice Search Is Local Search Heaven [2022] 

Voice assistants like “Hey Google” or “Alexa” are now in almost every home.

And they are a goldmine for local search.

To look at this phenomenon, Chitika analyzed its data to extract some key findings.

People who search with their voice are nearly three times more likely to be looking for local results – Chitika Insights

Before we proceed, let us look at the methodology here:

Study Methodology

This study was done using data from the Chitika network. Chitika analyzed millions of impressions from its ad network looking into the referring google searches.

By analyzing the referring domain and the pattern of queries, this study and insights were extracted. Read more about the methodology here.

We looked into iPhone Google usage – quite a bit of it came from the Google app. While sifting through the data, we also noticed an interesting tidbit – of the iPhone search app, almost seven percent of searches were done through Google’s voice search.

After that, we looked into what people were searching for with their voice that was different than with their keyboard.  Interestingly, voice searches were nearly three times more likely to be local than non-voice.

Key Insight: Voice searches were nearly three times more likely to be local than non-voice.

Let’s dig in deeper now:

Raw Results

It does make sense – after all, searching by speaking is often done in the car, leading to a higher proportion of locally-oriented queries.

Searching by speaking is often done in the car, leading to a higher proportion of locally-oriented queries – Chitika Insights

It’s also rather telling to look at other categories that do unusually well or unusually poorly in receiving traffic from voice searches.

The top genres receiving queries from the Google app and from Google voice search on the iPhone are as follows:

Some Observations

With this, website owners can begin composing specialized landing pages for the different types of Google traffic.  For example, a consumer goods manufacturer with an e-commerce site may see better overall results if they show voice search traffic a special landing page with places to purchase products locally, rather than simply showing their e-commerce site.

Summary and Conclusion

I’d like to thank the Data team at Chitika for making this study possible.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we collected and analyzed the data for this study, here is the methodology that Chitika used for all its studies.

And in case you are curious, our new company, Poll the People, will be doing lot more studies like this. For example, you can test your landing pages with real people and optimize for local searches.