As voice becomes the dominant force in search and people spend more time consuming content via social media, the future for the humble home page looks very bleak.
If comScore is correct and half of all searches by 2020[1] are made via voice, a crucial question arises: will we still need websites?
Even if the research is over-egged and the tipping point is reached a year or two later, the question still remains.
As consumers increasingly get used to asking Alexa, Siri or Google for the news headlines, a dinner recipe or flight options for a weekend away, answers will not be provided by ten blue SEO links. Rather, the options will be weighed up by an algorithm before what is considered to be the best answer is read out.
Remember Lycos and AltaVista?
New technology can always delight early adopters, but as it becomes more mainstream, seasoned observers know some huge names may become casualties as the public adopts new behaviors. Remember AltaVista, AskJeeves and Lycos, as well as when Yahoo! was a force in search? Read these names out loud and you may be less inclined to wonder whether voice will have an impact and shift focus to picking winners and losers.
Make no mistake, this is happening: a tide of disruption heading for search. Canalys[2] estimates 56.3 million smart speakers will ship this year alone. The Amazon Echo has first-mover advantage and so has a 69% share. Google is in second spot with 25%.
However, given the core function of these speakers (beyond playing audio) is to perform voice searches, it would take a brave digital marketing executive to bet against Google closing the gap