As mobile search queries steadily increase, Google’s reporting that conversational search is playing a very large part in how users are carrying out their searches. Also of great significance is the way in which voice search queries are formatted when compared to desktop queries and those that are typed in by users.
At a recent SMX West keynote in Zurich, Google’s Director of Search, Behshad Behzadi, announced that Google’s progressing with work on conversational shopping, which is along the same lines as regular voice search but tailored specifically for shopping. Behzadi didn’t say exactly when conversational shopping would become publically available, but he did say that progress was being made, suggesting the new technology could be fairly imminent.
If you’re wondering what conversational shopping is and how it would sound, it’s a technique that would allow shoppers to find and/or buy products simply through talking to their device and is quite like regular voice queries, in that the initial search query wouldn’t have to be repeated. An example of how this would work in practice is someone saying to their device ‘Find me an Apple iMac with Retina 5K display’. They’d then see the results for the product in Google and if they gave the command ‘Buy that one from Techstores’, they’d find that pretty soon their Mac would arrive on their doorstep along with the purchase receipt.
Conversational shopping is an up-and-coming area you should be aware of if you’re an online retailer. A large number of SEOs are already building their shopping pages around different kinds of conversational voice queries. This helps them get traffic, since their pages are specifically designed to respond to various kinds of voice searches. In many cases, pages for desktop and non-voice searches are still running alongside the voice search pages.
Conversational shopping could have an effect on how organic and pay per click display in search results. AdWords advertisers have already seen some success in running campaigns based on voice searches and Google product listings ads will be a great match for conversational shopping, paving the way for future developments in this area.
