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Voicebot Turns 3 Surpassing 4 Million Page Views and Nearly 1 million Unique Visitors

Wow! It has been three years since an experimental blog transformed itself into the leading online publication and research source dedicated to the rise of voice and AI technologies. Voicebot first published with a handful of stories on September 15, 2019. The first entry wasn’t much more than a link to a Gartner article from earlier in 2016 that predicted: “by 2018, 30% of our interactions with technology will be through ‘conversations’ with smart machines.” It doesn’t seem like we quite reached that threshold last year, but as futurist Roy Amara famously said,

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Voicebot Data

Three years later and we have published over 2,000 original articles which represent the largest database of information related to the rise of voice assistants and the AI behind them. If you are looking for information in this area, you likely will get what you want more quickly by using Voicebot’s search bar before heading over to Google. In fact, in any given week, about 80% of our page views are articles more than a week old. Readers like our back catalog of industry information as much as our timely news reporting. Some key Voicebot stats after three years include:

  • Page View Milestones: 113 days to 10k, 333 to 100k, 629 to 1 million, 804 to 2 million, 1,056 to 4 million. For those of you who don’t like doing math in your head, that is about 27 months to the first 2 million pageviews and just 8.4 months for the second.
  • We had 1,156 article posts through 1 million page views with an average of 871 views per post, and that rose to 1,473 articles that averaged 1,361 page views per post for the 2 million mark and 2,015 articles averaging 1,985 views per post through 4 million. Granted, we have one post with over 50,000 page views and many with more than 20,000 so most articles didn’t break the 1k mark, but all are fairly widely read today and pageviews per article are up 46% over the past nine months.
  • Unique visitors to Voicebot.ai are nearing 1 million, more than double where we were 9 months ago. We expect to surpass this milestone in late October. Returning visitors over the past quarter represent 78% of total visitors. If you want to reach all of these people and build awareness for your product or service, go here.
  • Top 10 countries for readers: U.S., U.K., India, Canada, Germany, Australia, France, South Korea, Netherlands, Japan…in that order.
  • Voice AI news has a global audience with 46% of page views in the U.S. versus 54% elsewhere so far in 2019.
  • 114 podcasts with a 5.0-star rating and 45 reviews in Apple Podcasts. Thanks to our listeners. Wouldn’t mind getting a few more reviews people!
  • Voice Insider now has over 160 subscribers. We often break news there and share information you will find nowhere else. This includes reporting on Apple’s acquisition of PullString weeks before any news outlets had the information, a number of pieces on startup funding rounds and, of course, market data only for Insiders. Thanks to our patrons, heroes, and superheroes. You make it all possible.
  • We launched Voicebot Webinars over the summer and currently have five you can watch today and more planned. These get hundreds of registrations and live on for ongoing views on Voicebot and YouTube. The webinars have been a great way for Voicebot and our partners to provide a new source of education and awareness for the industry. You can learn more about sponsoring a webinar here.
  • Voicebot data and reporting has been covered by a wide range of academic and media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNET, TechCrunch, Recode, Business Insider, VentureBeat, Harvard Business Review, and many others.

TOP 5 MOST READ ARTICLES, MOST POPULAR INFOGRAPHIC & REPORT

  1. Amazon Alexa Skill Count Passes 15,000 July 2, 2017 (we broke this story and it still gets views two years later)
  2. YouTube is Back on Amazon Echo Show November 21, 2017 (we also had this story first)
  3. U.S. Smart Speaker Market Share: Apple Debuts at 4.1%, Amazon Falls and Google Rises June 3, 2108 (Voicebot original research)
  4. U.S. Smart Speaker Ownership Rises 40% in 2018 to 66.4 Million March 7, 2019 (Voicebot original research)
  5. Google Home Beats Amazon Echo in Q1 2018 Global Smart Speaker Shipments May 23, 2018 (we put this Canalys data in context and it actually took our site down and we had to change hosting providers)

A Big Month in the History of Voice AI

The first 50 Voicebot posts were mostly links to articles we thought were particularly useful in understanding what was happening around the rise of voice assistants and were part of our own research into the emerging space. There was also a little serendipity on the timing of Voicebot’s launch.

Two of the more important developments in the industry up to that time arrived the day before Voicebot’s official launch. Amazon announced the Echo Dot would be $49.99 and Echo launched in the UK and Germany. The Echo Dot represented the first sub $50 smart speaker and that price point and subsequent discounting became both a clear catalyst for device adoption and forced Google to develop the Mini which came a year later. Introduction into Europe meant Alexa would not just speak English or be American, but instead would be available in multiple languages and localized for specific countries.

Our first full-length article landed on September 19th and was an 820-word analysis of Amazon’s momentum in the space and how the 3,000 Alexa skill milestone, low-priced Echo Dot, integration of Alexa into third-party devices, and expansion into Europe suggested adoption would accelerate. The article also included our first chart that showed the rapid rise of Alexa skills from 14 to 3,000 in one year.

The following week Google Assistant was quietly launched as a feature of Google’s now deprecated Allo app. That was followed by Bloomberg revealing Apple was working on a smart home device that eventually became the HomePod, though we wouldn’t see evidence of that for another nine months. Then, on September 27th, Google acquired API.ai which Voicebot readers will now recognize as the software behind Dialogflow.

September 30th brought the introduction of the Alexa Prize, a university grant program that continues to support research and development with the goal of enabling Alexa to have a 20-minute humanlike conversation on popular topics. That was followed on October 3rd by Amazon posting 400 open jobs on the Alexa team. The next day Google Home debuted. Our critique at the time was that the device was very utility-focused and it lacked any semblance of fun which was a position Amazon was cultivating for Alexa. It seems like those threads largely remain intact three years later.

Then, on October 5th, Samsung announced it would acquire Viv, the technology which eventually became Bixby 2.0. Over a three week period, around the time Voicebot launched, much of the trajectory of the industry we see to this day was set in motion. That led us to graduate from links to more full-length articles which now regularly number over 60 per month.

The Voicebot Community

The best outcome of all of this is the growing and engaged community that Voicebot serves. There are occasional conferences and Meetups that we try to attend to connect in person with the people making a difference and moving the industry forward. However, throughout the year, we try to make Voicebot.ai, Voicebot Podcast, and Voice Insider your daily connection to the industry you are shaping. Here are a few shoutouts from the community that we definitely appreciated and motivated us to keep building Voicebot. Thanks!

From Trinity Audio (Best Voice-first Podcasts)

No voice-oriented podcast list would be credible without The Voicebot Podcast as for many, this is THE voice-first podcast to listen to.

From Carl Robinson of the VoiceTech Podcast (Best Podcasts for Voice Technology)

This is the original granddaddy of voice technology podcasts. Host Bret Kinsella interviews a wide range of high-profile business leaders and technologists from the voice industry, including CEOs, founders, and product designers…Essential listening.

So, a quick shoutout from Team Voicebot to everyone who reads, listens, analyzes, and watches the materials we produce every day. Three years after launch, Voicebot Nation is strong and growing. Thank you again for all of your support. Now, I think we have some charts to produce.

Voicebot at 2 Million Page Views – What Happened and What We’ve Learned

Amy Stapleton, Dave Kemp, and Pete Haas Discuss The Best of the First 100 Episodes – Voicebot Podcast Ep 105

Learn from Voice Industry Experts and Innovators in the New Voicebot Webinar Series

Categories
Voice AssistantVoicebot InterviewVoicebot Research
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