Voice Search
Voice search is searching by speaking instead of typing, like asking the Google app for the closest coffee shop. You tap the microphone and say what you want. Google's help page lists other everyday examples: getting directions to a store, checking tomorrow's weather, defining a word and booking a table for dinner.
Source: Google Search Help, Use Google Voice Search, checked October 29, 2026
What Voice Search means for your business
Google's help page for Search Live describes back-and-forth voice conversations with Search, with AI-generated audio answers and web links on the screen. A spoken question can turn into a conversation with follow-ups.
Lots of Google's own examples are about going somewhere or getting something done soon. For a local business, that puts the basics first: your name as people say it, your hours, your address and what you do.
We'd skip separate voice search pages. Google's app can read answers out loud, so someone may hear an answer and never open a website. We'd make sure your hours, address and services are right on your own site and your Google Business Profile, since those are the facts you control.
If people ask out loud for what you sell and hear old hours or the wrong address, fixing those details wherever you're listed is work we'd do first.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited Wikipedia, Google's own help page, site-search and SEO tool blogs and several YouTube videos. ChatGPT gave a plain speaking-instead-of-typing answer with steps and stock photos, and cited nothing.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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