Voice Search Statistics 2026: Adoption, Devices & SEO Data

Smart speaker ownership in the United States sits at 35% of Americans aged 12 and older, an estimated 101 million people, after four consecutive years hovering near one-third, according to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2025 study. Roughly 27.6% of online adults aged 16 to 64 worldwide use voice assistants every week (around 3 in 10, approximately one-third of that demographic), per DataReportal’s Digital 2025 Global Overview Report. The voice search story has split in two: dedicated speakers have stalled while voice queries on smartphones, in cars, and inside apps keep climbing.

Data below pairs with SQ Magazine’s voice assistant usage data, which tracks the device-level cohort behind these queries.

Key Takeaways

• 35% of Americans aged 12+ own an AI speaker, a level that Edison Research reports has held steady for four years.
• Roughly 27.6% of online adults aged 16 to 64 worldwide use a voice AI weekly (around 3 in 10), per DataReportal (approximately one-third of the cohort).
• 54% of UK adults have used a digital assistant in the past three months, with 41% of UK households owning a voice-enabled speaker, according to Ofcom.
• About 58% of consumers use voice search to find local business information, with “near me” voice queries up 150% since 2020, per BrightLocal.
• Google Assistant leads the US market with 91.9 million users in 2025, ahead of Siri at 86.5 million and Alexa at 77.2 million (figures reported about the calendar year), per EMARKETER.
• Connected-speaker owners request an average of 12.4 tasks per device weekly, up from 7.5 in 2017, the NPR/Edison Smart Audio study finds.
• 71% of consumers say they would prefer voice search to find product prices, per PwC’s Consumer Intelligence Series.

Editor’s Choice

• US voice assistant users will reach 168.2 million by 2029, up from 139.8 million in 2022, a net rise of roughly 28.4 million users (as discussed across the EMARKETER forecast).
• The UK leads US AI-speaker ownership by 10 percentage points: 45% of UK adults aged 16+ vs 35% of Americans aged 12+, per Edison’s data.
• Digital-assistant brand share in the UK: Alexa at 66%, Google Assistant at 31%, Siri at 28%, per Ofcom’s 2025 Audio Report.
• 43% of US owners have three or more of these devices in their household, per Edison’s Infinite Dial 2024.
• Voice-enabled speakers account for 18% of UK radio listening, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter, the regulator reports.
• US voice AI users will grow to 170.3 million by 2028 from 145.1 million in 2023, a CAGR of 3.3%, per EMARKETER’s earlier 2024 forecast.
• 57% of voice command users issue voice commands daily, the NPR/Edison Smart Audio study finds.

Recent Developments

• In March 2025, Edison Research published the Infinite Dial 2025, surveying 5,020 individuals aged 12+ in January 2025; results show US AI-speaker ownership at 35%, a one-point uptick from 2024 but still inside the four-year plateau range.
• In May 2025, Ofcom released its Audio Listening in the UK 2025 report, confirming 54% of UK adults used a voice AI in the past three months and that home speakers drive 18% of UK radio listening.
• In July 2025, Ofcom published the Communications Market Report 2025, putting UK household speaker penetration at 41%.
• In April 2025, the Edison firm reported UK home-speaker reach had hit 45% of the 16+ population, up from 25% four years earlier, formally outpacing US adoption by 10 percentage points.
• In February 2026 (2026-02-04), Amazon made Alexa+, its generative AI assistant built on Amazon Nova and Anthropic large language models, generally available to all US customers, free to Prime members, and $19.99 per month for standalone access.
• In 2025, EMARKETER’s Voice Assistant User Forecast projected roughly 91.9 million US Google Assistant users that year, with Siri at 86.5 million and Alexa at 77.2 million, all figures rounded to the nearest tenth and reported about the calendar year.

Voice Search User Counts and Adoption Rates

• Roughly 27.6% of online adults aged 16 to 64 worldwide use voice assistants every week (around 3 in 10, approximately a third), per DataReportal’s Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
• Nearly 20.5% of online adults worldwide engaged with voice search in mid-2024 (around 1 in 5, approximately one-fifth), the DataReportal report shows.
• US voice AI users will reach 168.2 million by 2029, up from 139.8 million in 2022, per EMARKETER’s 2025 forecast (the report talks about a steady upward curve).
• An earlier EMARKETER 2024 forecast pegged the cohort at 170.3 million US users by 2028, climbing from 145.1 million in 2023, a CAGR of 3.3%.
• Pew Research Center’s foundational 2017 survey found 46% of US adults used voice-controlled digital assistants, with 42% using them on smartphones, 14% on a computer or tablet, and 8% on a stand-alone home-speaker device.
• Global active voice AI footprint puts roughly 3 in 10 online adults aged 16 to 64 in the weekly-use cohort (around one-third, approximately a third), the DataReportal data finds.
• EMARKETER’s 2029 endpoint represents a net addition of 28.4 million new voice assistant users in the United States from 2022 (the figure many analysts have written about).

Source: EMARKETER, DataReportal, Pew Research Center

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US Smart Speaker Ownership Has Plateaued at 35%

• The 2025 Edison study reports 35% of Americans aged 12+ own at least one voice-enabled speaker, an estimated 101 million people.
• Home-speaker ownership has hovered around one-third of Americans for four consecutive years, per Edison’s data.
• Ownership in 2024 was 34%, down two points from 36% in 2023, before the one-point recovery in 2025, the Infinite Dial 2024 reports.
• 43% of US owners have three or more of these devices in their household, per the research firm.
• Among current owners, 22% had listened to audio through their device in the prior month and 18% in the prior week, the Infinite Dial 2025 finds.
• Earlier NPR/Edison Smart Audio survey data put US adult ownership at 35% in 2022, illustrating the long plateau.
• IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Smart Home Devices Tracker projected speaker shipments would fall 8.8% in 2024 before recovering to 0.7% growth in 2025.

Source: Edison Research, NPR Smart Audio Report

By the numbers: US AI-speaker reach has stalled near 35% of Americans aged 12+ for four straight years per the 2025 Edison study. The data points to a market shifting from device acquisition to deeper engagement on devices already in homes, and on smartphones, where voice queries remain dominant.

Voice search keeps growing through pre-installed assistants on Android and iPhone, alongside SQ Magazine’s Google search statistics coverage of those device footprints.

Voice Assistant Brand Share: Google vs Siri vs Alexa

• Google Assistant leads US voice AI users at 91.9 million in 2025, per EMARKETER (a figure widely talked about across the industry).
• Siri ranks second in the US at 86.5 million users in 2025, the EMARKETER forecast shows (a number quoted in stories about the brand-share gap).
• Alexa ranks third in the US at 77.2 million users in 2025, the EMARKETER data shows (commentary about Alexa’s plateau has cited this figure).
• Google Assistant grew from 81.5 million US users in 2022 to 88.8 million in 2024, the EMARKETER brand-level chart shows.
• In the UK, the brand order flips: 66% of digital assistant users choose Alexa, more than double the 31% using Google Assistant and the 28% using Siri, per Ofcom’s 2025 audio study.
• Many UK voice AI users rely on multiple platforms, since the brand-share figures sum above 100% in Ofcom’s data.
• The 2025 EMARKETER spread between Google Assistant at the top and Alexa in third place comes to 14.7 million US users (a gap analysts often write about).

UK Voice Search Adoption Outpaces the US

• UK AI-speaker ownership reached 45% of adults aged 16+ in 2025, up from 25% four years earlier, per Edison’s UK study.
• The UK leads the US by 10 percentage points in home-speaker ownership: 45% vs 35%, per Edison’s data.
• 54% of UK adults reported using a voice AI in the past three months, per Ofcom’s 2025 audio study.
• 41% of UK households own a voice-enabled speaker, per Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2025.
• These devices account for 18% of UK radio listening, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter, the regulator reports.
• 63% of UK speaker owners tap the device for music streaming and 57% turn to it for live radio, the Ofcom data shows.
• 54% of UK voice AI users who listen to the radio do so via a home speaker, compared with 20% via smartphone, according to Ofcom.

Source: Edison Research, Ofcom Audio Report 2025, Ofcom Communications Market Report 2025

Age splits below echo patterns seen in SQ Magazine’s attention span statistics coverage.

Voice Search Demographics by Age Group

• 55% of US adults aged 18 to 49 used digital assistants in Pew Research’s foundational survey, compared with 37% of those aged 50 and older.
• 29% of US adults under 50 had a home speaker device, vs 19% of those aged 50 and older, the Pew survey shows.
• 42% of US adults reported using digital assistants on a smartphone, 14% on a computer or tablet, and 8% on a stand-alone home-speaker device, the Pew data finds.
• One-quarter of US adults reported having a voice-enabled speaker in their home in Pew Research’s 2019 follow-up.
• Among all US adults surveyed by Pew, 46% used voice-controlled digital assistants overall.
• DataReportal’s 2025 global figure of roughly 27.6% weekly voice AI use covers online adults aged 16 to 64 only (around two-thirds of the under-65 cohort, approximately one-third weekly).

Voice Search Frequency: How Often People Use It

• 57% of voice command users issue voice commands daily, the NPR/Edison Smart Audio Report finds.
• Connected-speaker owners request an average of 12.4 tasks per device weekly, up from 7.5 in 2017, the same report shows.
• 22% of US owners listened to audio through their device in the prior month, and 18% did so in the prior week, the Infinite Dial 2025 reports.
• Roughly 3 in 10 online adults aged 16 to 64 globally use a voice AI each week (around one-third of the cohort, approximately a third weekly), the DataReportal report shows.
• Weekly task volume per connected-speaker household has risen 65% from the 2017 baseline, derived from the NPR/Edison 7.5 to 12.4 task progression.
• Mid-2024 global voice search engagement reached roughly 20.5% of online adults (around 1 in 5, approximately one-fifth), the DataReportal data shows.

Voice Commerce and Voice Shopping Statistics

• 24% of consumers have used digital assistants for online shopping, the PwC Consumer Intelligence Series finds.
• 40% of voice AI users have tapped the technology to search for product information, the PwC research shows.
• 71% of consumers say they would prefer voice search to find product prices, according to the PwC report.
• 41% of consumers tap voice queries to find grocery stores, 40% rely on it to find what items a business has in stock, and 32% turn to it for clothing stores, the PwC findings show.
• 49% of voice shopping consumers use a digital assistant because it is easier, and 44% find shopping with the AI assistant faster, the same PwC study reports.
• PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer Survey of 20,662 consumers across 31 countries found that more than half of consumers are comfortable using AI to replace human interaction for low-risk activities such as drafting emails and tracking orders.

Key finding: PwC’s Consumer Intelligence Series found 71% of consumers prefer voice search to find product prices, 40% use it for product information, and 24% have used voice assistants for online shopping. The pattern points to voice as a discovery and price-comparison layer, not a closed-loop purchase channel for most consumers.

Voice Search for Local Business Discovery

• About 58% of consumers tap voice queries to find local business information, per BrightLocal’s Consumer Search Behavior research.
• “Near me” voice queries grew about 150% since 2020, per BrightLocal.
• About 76% of voice searches include a local intent component, such as “near me” or another local modifier, per BrightLocal.
• 41% of US consumers turn to voice queries to find grocery stores, the PwC research finds.
• 40% of US consumers tap voice queries to find what items a local business has in stock, the PwC data shows.
• 32% of US consumers rely on voice queries to find clothing stores, the same PwC study reports.

Voice Search SEO Impact and Result Page Characteristics

• About 58% of consumers tap voice queries to find local business information, per BrightLocal.
• About 76% of voice search queries carry local intent, raising the SEO value of local pack and local business listing optimization, per BrightLocal.
• Of Ofcom’s UK data, 63% of UK speaker owners use the device to listen to music streaming, and 57% use it for live radio, indicating that audio queries dominate the SEO surface for these devices.
• 71% of UK voice AI users tap the device to listen to radio stations, the Ofcom data shows.
• BrightLocal’s “near me” growth figure of about 150% since 2020 reframes voice SEO as a local-discovery problem, not a long-form-content problem.
• 40% of voice AI users have tapped the technology to search for product information, raising commerce-page schema and structured data signals as voice SEO priorities, the PwC findings show.

Source: BrightLocal, Ofcom Audio Report 2025, PwC

Voice Search by Device Type (Smartphone, Speaker, Car)

• 42% of US adults reported using digital assistants on a smartphone, the Pew survey notes.
• 14% used a digital assistant on a computer or tablet, the same Pew data shows.
• 8% of US adults used a voice AI on a stand-alone home speaker such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, according to the foundational Pew survey reports.
• In the UK, 54% of voice AI users who listen to the radio make voice requests via a home speaker, compared with 20% via smartphone, the regulator notes.
• The latest Edison study reports the US AI-speaker reach at 35% of Americans aged 12+, putting the US footprint at 101 million people.
• Among UK speaker owners, 63% stream music and 57% listen to live radio on the device, the Ofcom audio study reports.

Source: Pew Research Center, Ofcom Audio Report 2025, Edison Research

Privacy Concerns and Non-Adoption Reasons

Privacy concerns sit alongside SQ Magazine’s voice phishing statistics on rising voice-fraud risk.

• 61% of non-users say they are just not interested in the tool, the Pew survey reports.
• 28% of non-users say they do not engage with digital assistants because none of the devices they own have the feature, the Pew data shows.
• 27% of non-users say they avoid voice AI because they are concerned about privacy, the same survey notes.
• 83% of consumers worldwide say protection of their personal data is essential to earning their trust, per PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer Survey.
• 80% of consumers demand assurances about the privacy of their personal information, the PwC survey finds.
• PwC’s 2024 cohort of 20,662 consumers across 31 countries treats data protection as a baseline trust signal.

Voice Assistants for Audio: Radio, Podcasts, Music

• 71% of UK voice AI users tap the device to listen to radio stations, the regulator reports.
• 71% of UK voice AI users also tap the device for other audio, including music streaming and podcasts, the same study finds.
• These devices account for 18% of UK radio listening, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter, the Ofcom data shows.
• Among UK speaker owners, 63% tap the device for music streaming and 57% for live radio, according to the Ofcom audio study notes.
• Owners of these devices request an average of 12.4 tasks per device weekly, up from 7.5 in 2017, the NPR/Edison Smart Audio Report finds.
• 22% of US speaker owners had listened to audio through the device in the prior month, and 18% did so in the prior week, per Edison’s Infinite Dial 2025.

Source: Ofcom Audio Report 2025, Edison Research, NPR/Edison Smart Audio Report

Voice Search Growth Forecast Through 2029

Forecasts from EMARKETER, IDC, and DataReportal converge on slow but durable user growth. Pairs with SQ Magazine’s browser market share data on the broader query interface mix.

• EMARKETER’s 2025 forecast projects US voice AI users will reach 168.2 million by 2029, up from 139.8 million in 2022 (the trajectory most analysts write about).
• The 2022 to 2029 net addition runs to 28.4 million US users, per EMARKETER (a figure cited across reports about the channel).
• EMARKETER’s earlier 2024 forecast pegged the US digital-assistant cohort at 170.3 million by 2028, climbing from 145.1 million in 2023, a CAGR of 3.3%.
• IDC projected voice-enabled-speaker shipments would decline 8.8% in 2024 and recover to 0.7% growth in 2025, per its Worldwide Quarterly Smart Home Devices Tracker.
• Google Assistant’s 2025 US user base of 91.9 million sets it ahead of Siri’s 86.5 million and Alexa’s 77.2 million, per EMARKETER (a ranking that has held steady, the firm has talked about).
• Global weekly voice AI use among online adults aged 16 to 64 sits at roughly 27.6% (around 3 in 10, approximately one-third) as of early 2025, per DataReportal.

Source: EMARKETER, IDC, DataReportal

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Conclusion

US AI-speaker reach has held near 35% of Americans aged 12 and older for four years, the 2025 Edison study reports. Roughly 27.6% of online adults aged 16 to 64 globally now use a voice AI weekly (around one-third of the under-65 cohort, approximately a third overall), the DataReportal report shows. Across SQ Magazine’s platform statistics coverage, the consistent pattern is engagement depth rising even as user growth slows. Voice fits that pattern: per-user task volume has climbed from 7.5 to 12.4 weekly requests since 2017, even as device counts have stalled.

The winners are operators who already own a voice AI footprint: Google through Android, Apple through iPhone, and Amazon through the installed base. Local businesses with strong Google Business Profiles and structured data benefit from the 150% rise in “near me” voice queries since 2020. The question for this year is whether Alexa’s UK-leading 66% digital-assistant share, paired with home speakers driving 18% of UK radio listening, signals what the US engagement curve looks like at maturity.