I had a conversation with someone about the scope of my job last week. I talked about the fact that 20 years ago I had "secret" book with all the listings and people came to me to find out the secret and I helped them pick the best house for them. But in the time that has past I've grown as has the industry. I know a little about html code, a little about SEO and SERPS, a little about photography and photoshop, a little about blogging, a little about web sites and pages and building them. I've worked my tail off to stay on page one of Google searches and then today I read a post about voice searches that totally makes me want to cry. I was like... NO, I can't do ONE MORE THING, I just CAN'T.
Of course as soon as the words were out of my mouth I set out to see "am I relevant" in a voice search. And fortunately to my surprise I was told by my echo that I am and I'll have to get my agent that used the Google home system to check on there, but I also asked Siri and thanks to two things... the first being screen shots and the second being Alan May , I can show you those results. Yup, Siri clearly knows. Why does Siri know, well apparently Yelp told her. And why do I have those three new reviews on yelp, well because Alan May told me it made his phone ring.
I phrased the question to Siri a number of ways, I asked her to recommend an agent, who was the best agent, what is the best firm? I was consistently the "highest rated option" and because those reviews are clearly the ones on yelp 
I can attest to why you should ask people to review you on yelp. However I can also tell you that they will call you relentlessly after you update your profile and add some photos and reviews. But I have no problem saying... "I don't need to advertise on yelp", I am happy with my profile as it is.
So go read Tammy Emineth's post on How to Optimize for Voice Searches which she relays the information will account for 50% of all searches in just two years, and then do your own testing. I know I have some work to do for a couple of the questions I asked Google on my computer, I was pretty happy with my Siri results, but I'd like to test it out on a phone that is NOT mine. Now I have to take advantage of no late baseball game and get some sleep. Between taking care of my parents and my kid's pets who are respectively on vacation and west coast baseball hours I'm pretty tired this week.
