• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 30, 2017

Google Assistant now allows consumers to find local professionals through voice commands, adding services from HomeAdvisor and Porch into the listing. 

The service through Google Assistant, announced Thursday, will now suggest businesses pre-screened by Google and companies such as HomeAdvisor and Porch. The feature will begin rolling out to U.S. users in the coming weeks.

The platform will serve up the information on the best option and will offer a service called HomeAdvisor Instant Connect that taps into data such as location and time to determine the professional most likely to respond the most rapidly to the consumer's needs. Algorithms predict which professional is available to take the call.

The service is available via the Google Assistant on eligible Android phones, iPhones and on voice-activated speakers such as Google Home and Google Mini.

HomeAdvisor CTO Brandon Ridenour said the company believes voice services will outpace the adoption of mobile. Not only through the number of devices in homes, but the frequency in which devices are used.

"A lot of people start with 'tell me the time' or 'tell me the weather forecast,' but there are other ways to make the devices really useful," he said. "We think it's done by allowing these systems to accomplish something for you."

Those "accomplishments' are done, for example, through food ordering sites like Grub Hub and Uber Eats, where the task is completely automated.

Google is not the only company that is betting big on voice. "Amazon cited voice as the 'next major computing shift,' with active users of Alexa Skills increasing five-fold since early 2016," Colin Sebastian, research analyst at Baird Equity Research, wrote in a research note.

HomeAdvisor also works with Amazon Alexa, but it's not a default service. With Amazon, consumers must install the HomeAdvisor Skill and explicitly ask for the service.