Google gave digital marketers something of an early Christmas present, releasing the first documented guidelines on how it will be assessing and ranking the quality of answers for voice search queries.

The guidelines, which will be followed by Google’s “search quality raters” highlight how Google will be assessing the suitability of an answer for a voice query, and how they will be judging factors such as information relevance, quality, length, grammar and elocution.

Whilst the guidelines are relatively basic for now, they represent the first official statement from Google as to what it is looking for from publishers and brands as it develops its library of voice search answers.

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Danielle, and on this edition of Digital Minute, we’re taking a closer look at Google’s new voice search guidelines.

Google released its latest guidelines for voice search just before the Christmas break and, with voice search set to be one of the hot topics of 2018, there is plenty for digital marketers to get their heads around.

The search engine’s guidelines cover a range of factors, including the quality and relevance of the information provided in an answer, the length of the answer, grammar and elocution.

The guidelines provide an insight into how Google’s team of “search quality raters” will assess how Google’s voice devices answer a query. It gives examples of what Google considers to be a good answer, and examples of answers that are unlikely to meet the searcher’s expectations.

Whilst there are few surprises – and no commercial search examples – in these guidelines, they do provide the first official insight into how Google plans to answer voice-based search queries – something that digital marketers are likely to be focusing heavily on in 2018.

We’ve taken a closer look at the guidelines and summarised our key takeaways over on our blog. Thanks for watching, I’m Danielle Harrod, and that was your Digital Minute.

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