How to Add Voice Search Capability to Your WordPress Site

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could bring voice search functionality to your WordPress site?

If you have a smartphone, then you are probably familiar with voice search using Siri, Google, or Cortana. You can add similar functionality to your WordPress website and provide a better user experience.

In this article, we will show you how to add voice search to WordPress.

Why Add Voice Search Capability in WordPress?

Adding voice search to your WordPress website can take your user experience to the next level. It’s an invaluable feature to have on your site, as it helps your visitors to search for content without having to type anything.

It is particularly useful for visually impaired users who have a hard time reading and typing and then rely on voice commands to navigate the internet. This allows them to find articles and products on your website with ease.

Additionally, you can also use voice search yourself and speed up your work processes. It allows you to quickly discover pages and posts you’re looking for, instead of clicking different elements and typing the commands.

That said, let’s see how you can set up voice search in WordPress.

Adding Voice Search Capability in WordPress

The easiest way of setting up voice search in WordPress is by using the Voice Search plugin. It is a free WordPress plugin and works out of the box. There are no special settings for you to configure.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Voice Search plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, if you already have a search widget added to your site, then you don’t need to do anything. The plugin will automatically add the voice search option in the search bar.

If you do not have a search widget already, all you need to do is go to the Appearance » Widgets section in your admin area. Next, add the default WordPress search widget to a sidebar.

Simply click the ‘+’ icon and add the ‘Search’ widget block in the widgets area.

Note that because the plugin works within the default WordPress search, you can add the ‘Search’ block to any widget-ready area on your site, such as posts or pages, not just sidebars.

After the widget block has been added, simply visit your website, and you will see a microphone icon in the WordPress search box.

When a user clicks on the microphone icon, they can speak the words they want to search for, and the plugin will look for content with those search terms.

Note that the plugin currently supports Google Chrome on desktop and mobile. It also modifies only the default WordPress search form to add voice input.

This means that if you are using a custom search solution like Google search for WordPress or SearchWP, then this plugin will not work with your search form.

You can also see our guide on how to improve WordPress search for more details.

We hope this article helped you add voice search to your WordPress site. You may also want to check out our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform and the best WooCommerce plugins.

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