Voice Search and AI Assistants: How to Be the Answer on Siri, Alexa and Google

What voice search really is now

Strip away the hype and voice search covers a few distinct situations:

• Finding a place while moving. “Find a pharmacy open now.” “Directions to the nearest hardware store.” Asked from a car or a phone, usually with a decision minutes away.
• Checking a fact about a place. “What time does the farmers market close?” “Call the clinic.” The person already knows who you are and wants the hours, the phone number or the route.
• Asking a question. “How do I know if my furnace filter needs changing?” Answered from the web, or by an AI model, often with a source mentioned.

The first two are local and depend almost entirely on listing data. The third depends on web content and is converging with AI search: the assistants on phones and speakers are being rebuilt around the same large language models that power chat assistants. Google is moving its assistant experience to Gemini, Apple has been adding AI features to Siri, and Amazon has introduced a generative version of Alexa. The voice is a new interface; the sources underneath are familiar.

That is good news. It means there is no secret voice optimization to buy. It also means the work is mostly the same work as local search and AI visibility, done with more attention to accuracy, because a spoken answer usually names one business and moves on.

Where each assistant gets its answers

Providers do not publish every source or how they weigh them, and arrangements change. What is stable enough to plan around:

• Google’s assistant (Google Assistant, now giving way to Gemini on many devices) draws local answers from Google Maps and Business Profiles, and general answers from Google Search and its AI features. Android Auto uses Google Maps.
• Siri draws place information from Apple Maps, which businesses can claim and manage through Apple Business Connect. CarPlay users asking for directions are mostly using Apple Maps unless they have chosen another app. For general questions Siri draws on web results and, increasingly, on AI models.
• Alexa is the hardest to plan for. Amazon does not offer Canadian businesses a simple equivalent of a Business Profile, and its local answers rely on third-party data sources. The practical response is consistency across the major directories and listing platforms, so that whichever source it uses is correct.

The common thread is listings. If your Google Business Profile and Apple Maps place card are accurate and complete, you have covered most local voice queries on most devices.

Listings first: hours, categories and the word “now”

Voice queries are full of time and place: open now, near me, on the way, tonight. An assistant cannot answer them well from a vague listing, and it will not take a chance on a business whose hours might be wrong.

• Claim and complete both major map listings. Google Business Profile and Apple Business Connect, for every location. Many businesses have managed their Google profile for years and never looked at Apple Maps. The Google Business Profile guide covers the Google side in depth.
• Keep hours exact. Regular hours, holiday hours and seasonal changes, updated before they take effect. In Atlantic Canada, where many businesses change hours with the tourist season, stale seasonal hours are the most common reason an assistant sends someone to a closed door.
• Choose precise categories. The primary category is how a listing gets matched to a request like “find a physiotherapist”. Pick the most specific accurate one.
• Fill in attributes. Accessibility, payment options, takeout, appointments required, languages spoken. Assistants use these to answer follow-up questions.
• Make the phone number work. “Call [business]” is one of the most common voice actions. The listed number should reach a person or a useful message during listed hours.
• Keep directories consistent. The same name, address and phone number on the main directories and listing platforms, because some assistants use them.

Reviews matter here as they do in any local search: a steady flow of recent, genuine reviews helps a listing compete. The near me challenge looks at what separates the businesses winning local results in smaller Atlantic Canadian towns.

Make your name easy to say and recognize

Voice adds a problem typed search does not have: speech recognition. If a customer says your business name and the assistant hears something else, the best listing in the world will not help.

• Test it. Ask each assistant for your business by name, the way a customer would say it, on a couple of different devices. Note what it hears.
• Watch unusual spellings. Creative spellings, initials, numbers and punctuation in names are often misheard or mismatched. If customers commonly say your name differently from how it is written, make sure the spoken version appears on your website and listings too.
• Handle both languages. In New Brunswick and other bilingual communities, customers may say your name with French or English pronunciation, or use a French name for the business. If you trade under names in both languages, list both consistently. A French-language query should be able to find you as easily as an English one.
• Be careful with generic names. A business called something like “Main Street Dental” competes with every similar name in the province. The address and category have to be exact so the assistant picks the right one.

This is also a reason to think about voice before naming or renaming a business. A name that is easy to say, spell and recognize is easier to find by every route.

Answer spoken questions on your website

For informational questions, assistants read from web pages or summarize them through AI models. The content that serves them well is the content that serves any reader well:

• Write the questions customers actually ask, in their words, as headings or clear sentences: “Do you take walk-ins?”, “How long does a furnace inspection take?”
• Answer in the first sentence. A spoken answer is short. If the answer is buried in the third paragraph, a different page will be read aloud.
• Keep it in plain text. Hours, pricing policies, service areas and directions in images or PDFs cannot be read aloud.
• Be specific about place. “We serve Fredericton, Oromocto and the surrounding area” matches far more requests than “we serve the region”.

A visible FAQ section on service pages is a sensible way to do this, because it helps people as well. Do not expect special treatment for FAQ markup, though: Google now shows FAQ rich results only for a narrow set of authoritative government and health sites, and Speakable markup is a limited feature aimed at news publishers. What structured data actually does covers the markup that is worth the effort.

Technical basics still matter. A fast, secure, mobile-friendly site is easier to read for every system and every visitor arriving from a voice result on a phone. Use Search Console and current performance reports to check this, rather than older single-purpose testing tools that have since been retired.

A worked example

Consider an illustrative seasonal ice cream shop on a main road in a small New Brunswick town. Its customers are locals in the evening and road-trippers on summer afternoons, many of whom ask their phone or car for “ice cream near me”.

A short review finds that the Google profile shows last year’s closing date, the Apple Maps place card was never claimed and lists an old phone number, and the shop’s playful name uses an unusual spelling that voice assistants mishear. The website lists hours in a picture of a chalkboard.

The fixes take an afternoon: update and claim both listings with this season’s dates and hours, add the spoken version of the name to the website and listings, put hours and the opening date in text on the home page, and choose the most specific category available. Next spring, update everything before opening day. None of it is clever, and all of it decides whether the car’s assistant names this shop or the chain at the highway exit.

Measuring voice, honestly

No analytics tool reports “voice searches” as a channel, and the platforms do not tell you how many people found you by speaking. Be wary of anyone who offers a precise figure. What you can watch:

• Calls, direction requests and website visits from your Google Business Profile, and the equivalent insights in Apple Business Connect.
• Whether assistants answer correctly when you ask them about your business, checked each season.
• Questions customers ask on the phone, which are often the same questions they ask assistants.

Voice is best treated as one more reason to get the fundamentals right, not as a separate program. That is how our SEO and AI visibility work treats it: accurate listings everywhere, clear answers on your own site, and the same consistent facts that help AI search engines find and recommend businesses. For how AI-generated answers are changing local results more broadly, see how AI Overviews are reshaping local search.