As an increasing amount of handheld tech continues to find its way on the market, businesses have adjusted to the reality of on-demand content. Through the use of SEO strategies, complex marketing campaigns and content creation, brands and businesses strive to reach as many people as possible through search engines and social media. Search engines continue to remain the most popular medium for answers to questions, but the nature of how people search for information continues to change. Voice searches comprise close to 1 in 5 search queries on Google at present, but the technology is still underdeveloped. Today, we’ll discuss how voice search still has a long way to go.

Voice Search Merely Performs an Inquiry

With around 20 percent of all search queries on Google coming via voice searches, anybody could be excused for thinking that it is a big and innovative deal. However, anyone who has performed a voice search before knows that the functionality ceases to exist after the query is executed. Let’s say that you’re walking to your car and want to find a great place to eat locally, but you’re carrying big boxes of work materials. While you may be able to push a button and do a quick voice search, that’s where voice engagement ends. You’ll need to free up your hands to click on each result and inspect for yourself which place meets your standards. While pinging noise via mobile searches may eliminate one arcane part of the search process, the majority of the work still requires traditional engagement.

Voice Search Doesn’t Enjoy Universal App Functionality

Voice search likely will factor prominently into how we navigate the web and mobile applications in the future. For now, however, it is very limited. Imagine a world in which voice search not only understands intent when responding to a search engine query and therefore engages, but also can work seamlessly within and between apps. For instance, imagine being able to search via voice within an app for a particular saved file, contact or post. This will undoubtedly revolutionize how social media works in the coming years, but will also have impacts on how various apps will work in tandem to create a truly synergistic experience for mobile users.

Voice Search Doesn’t Understand Emotion

To be fair, the lack of emotional interpretation within voice search isn’t unique. Traditional search engine queries are not inherently scanned for hints of sadness, sarcasm, anger and other emotions based solely on phrase structure; they instead rely upon word association to determine intent. Imagine a world, however, where voice searches can actually be scanned for the emotion behind the search. A search engine that can detect the difference between a search query detected with sarcasm in mind versus serious intent can more adequately render accurate search results rather than pinging noise at the user. Such a concept is already theoretically possible, but we must wait for all of the technological pieces of the puzzle (software, hardware and search engine algorithms, to name a few) to be integrated.

With so many people using voice search for its basic functionality today, it is almost certain that advances in this technology in the coming years will be embraced with open arms. If you could gift to your mobile device one critical functionality involving voice search, what would it be? Tell us below about it.