Difficulties with the language search
Let us now turn to the less pleasant aspects of language search. Firstly, the measurement of voice search traffic is currently still a complex issue. Because although the traffic should actually come from organic search, in Google Analytics it falls under «direct traffic» and is therefore, strictly speaking, dark traffic.
But not only the measurement is difficult. A side effect is the so-called «zero click searches», which lead to a decrease of the own website traffic. Because: If a speech assistant finds a (his opinion) perfect answer, the speech assistant reads the appropriate answer to the user's question and the user no longer has to click on the corresponding website. This results in so-called zero-click searches and the traffic on the website drops.
According to current studies (2019, Spark Toro/Rand Fishkin), zero click searches account for around 50% of search traffic, and the trend is rising. For website operators these are of course annoying at first. This is because they miss important website traffic.
A small consolation for all those who are annoyed by the declining traffic caused by voice searches: If Google actually selects an excerpt of your site for THE one answer, you are guaranteed attention and credibility. Especially for brands or institutions that are not yet known, this can be a great benefit.