Apple Maps – Is It Right For Your Business?

When you think of a good GPS app, it’s a good bet that the first thing that pops into your head is Google Maps. This makes sense – Google has become so much a part of our lives that most of us can’t imagine life without the Google services. Any company whose name has become a globally accepted verb is doing a good job, and Google helped pioneer some of the advances in mapping and GPS technology that we now take for granted.

When Apple Maps first debuted, it was seen as a joke on the tech scene as users were gettingwildly inaccurate directions. But over the last couple of years, Apple has been quietly investing in improving Apple Maps on iOS devices, and even as early as 2 years ago, integrated transit direction support in iOS 9. Now, when users use the default Siri search on their iPhones, it defaults to the Apple Maps search results.

According to Apple, Apple Maps on iPhone and iPad is now used more than three times as often as Google Maps. And Apple reported that Apple Maps nows handles more than 5 billion mapping requests each week. Maybe that’s because Google Maps users on iOS would need to take an additional step to query a local business, product, or service. And that step would be opening either the Google search app or Google Maps app.

Whereas with Siri, you can technically activate it with voice command and get your search (i.e. “hey siri” and then “dentist in Burlington”… as an example).  Additionally, any app in the Apple app store uses Apple Maps.

Voice Search is the future here
According to comscore: “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” and Consulting firm Capgemini says voice-assistant users will spend 18% of their total expenses via voice assistants in the next three years.

• 58% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information in the last 12 months
• 46% of voice search users look for a local business on a daily basis
• 27% visit the website of a local business after making a voice search
• 25% of consumers say they haven’t yet tried local voice search, but would consider it

In the 18-34 age range 77% answered yes to “Have you used voice search to find information for a local business in the last 12 months?”