"Hey Google" Is Killing Your Website Traffic

Voice results today are increasingly answer-first. On smart speakers, assistants typically read a single response; on phones, that response often comes from a featured snippet or Google’s AI Overviews—both of which include citations to sources. Your playbook is less about “voice tricks” and more about structuring genuinely helpful content that assistants can lift cleanly. Google for Developers

What's been driving spoken answers?

1. Featured snippets (answer boxes) are the primary input.
   Google says snippets are shown when a short passage answers the question—these are “helpful when you… search by voice.” Optimize for that one clean answer up top. Google Help
2. AI Overviews (AIO) are expanding and cite sources.
   Google rolled AIO to U.S. users in 2024 and has continued updates/expansion; the feature summarizes answers and links to the pages it draws from. Being clear, accurate, and well-structured increases your odds of being cited.
3. FAQ/HowTo rich results are no longer your shortcut.
   Google reduced/limited visibility of FAQ and HowTo rich results (especially on mobile). Don’t bank your voice strategy on these formats.
4. “Speakable” markup is niche.
   speakable exists at Schema.org, but Google’s historic implementation focused on US/English news publishers and remains limited; it’s not a general-purpose ranking boost. Use only if you’re an eligible news outlet. Schema.org
5. Core updates in 2025 reward relevance and satisfaction; the August spam update tightens enforcement.
   Links or markup alone won’t win voice inclusion if the content isn’t helpful. The March and June 2025 core updates plus the August 2025 Spam Update underline that quality and policy compliance matter most. status.search.google.com