At the Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) this week, Apple announced its voice assistant Siri will be coming to Mac devices. Siri will be integrated into the all new macOS “Sierra” when it’s released later this year.
This means that voice search is about to become more prevalent than it already is. With voice searches making up roughly 25% of all searches; voice search is today where mobile search was just a few years ago. Expect that number to increase with the release of the new macOS.
Further, Google is not set to benefit from this change because it will not be the default provider for searches made via Siri in macOS. This means potential gains in desktop search market share for competing search engines once Apple’s new OS rolls out
What will separate Apple’s current Spotlight search for OS X and Siri is macOS Sierra is that Spotlight is limited to searching only within the Mac itself. Siri will have the ability to search beyond just what’s on the Mac to searching the web in order to complete user queries. Siri on Mac will also be opened up to developers so it will eventually even be able to talk to other apps and have them perform tasks for you.
No changes to Spotlight search have been announced, so presumably that feature will continue functioning as it currently does. Inexplicably on Spotlight search for iOS you’re able to search your device and the web at the same time, but Spotlight search for Mac is limited to just searching within the device.
