• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, May 15, 2019

Some 21% of those participating in a survey use voice search weekly, but a whopping 57% have never tried voice search technology, according to data released on Wednesday.

Nearly 60% of the 73,000 businesses and 1,000 consumers surveyed believe voice search will be important in the future, while 27% of respondents feel that voice search will not be important at all, according to the Uberall study, which set out to determine whether -- and how -- consumers adopt voice search to find information on local businesses.

The Uberall Voice Search Readiness Report 2019 analyzed the top reasons that people do not adopt voice search. Some 23.2% said they are not accustomed to it, while 19.7% said they don’t feel it is the most efficient means of search and 13.5% said they do not feel that it is accurate enough.

For those who do use voice search, 37% of frequent users reply that they use voice search while in their own home, compared with 34% who use it in the car where using their hands is not an option. About 11% use voice search when they walk to a destination. Other responses included using voice search at work, restaurants, shops, cafes and while on public transportation.

About 48% said they use voice search as a means to locate business information at least some of the time.

The number one reason that users cited for not adopting voice to search for business information is the inability to use natural dialogue, at 12.4%. Some 11.7% said they do not use voice search because of the lack of results in the search query.

Limitations appear to be the biggest hurdle that prevents the technology from gaining greater adoption, while the biggest opportunity for businesses to get ahead of their competition seems to be in offering consumers deals, sales or promotions that are tied to voice search, at a mere 7.6%.

Consumers are not the only ones who are shying away from voice search. Publishers also face challenges when it comes to voice search because Google has not communicated enough information on how voice search will benefit them and their site visitors.

In November 2018, Google asked webmasters to make a wish list of what they wanted. One of the items related to voice search is that they want to see voice query data in the Google Search Console.

Many are not sure how to support the transition from text and typing to voice search, according to Google. They don’t do enough to help them monetize voice-search queries.