Pew Research Center has not published a 2025 report on how many American adults use voice assistants. Its last measure of overall adult voice assistant use is from 2017 (46%). Its only 2025 voice figure comes from a survey of parents: 37% say their child aged 12 or younger uses a voice-activated assistant. Pew’s newest adult number came out in June 2026: 35% of U.S. adults say they have a smart speaker. For 2022, the best-sourced figures come from Edison Research and NPR: 35% of Americans 18+ owned a smart speaker, and 62% used a voice assistant on some device.
Below you will find every Pew release on the topic with its fieldwork dates, the 2022 numbers in full, a year-by-year table from 2014 to 2026, the official counts Amazon, Google and Apple have disclosed, and where the most-repeated voice search stats actually came from.
What Pew Research has published on voice assistants, 2017 to 2026
Searches for “Pew voice assistant usage 2025” turn up a lot of pages quoting Pew numbers that Pew never published. Here is the complete list of Pew releases that measure voice assistants or smart speakers, checked against pewresearch.org.
| Pew release (published) | Fieldwork | Who was asked | Voice finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nearly half of Americans use digital voice assistants (Dec 12, 2017) | Spring 2017 | U.S. adults | 46% use voice assistants; 42% on a smartphone, 14% on a computer or tablet, 8% on a standalone speaker |
| 5 things to know about Americans and their smart speakers (Nov 21, 2019) | June 3 to 17, 2019 | U.S. adults | 25% have a smart speaker at home |
| How parents describe their kids’ tech use (Oct 8, 2025) | May 13 to 26, 2025 | 3,054 parents of a child 12 or younger | 37% say their child uses or interacts with a voice-activated assistant (36% in Pew’s 2020 survey) |
| Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears (July 22, 2025) | Browsing data, March 2025 | 900 U.S. adults | No voice data. This is the 2025 Pew search study people often confuse with a voice report. |
| AI in Americans’ lives (Sept 17, 2025) | 2025 | U.S. adults | No voice assistant or smart speaker question |
| Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact (June 17, 2026) | Feb 17 to 23, 2026 | 5,119 U.S. adults | 35% have a smart speaker that uses AI, such as an Amazon Echo or Apple HomePod |
Is there a Pew Research voice assistant usage report for 2025?
No. If a page cites “Pew Research, 2025” for an adult voice assistant usage rate, it is either quoting the 2017 figure with a new date or quoting someone else. The two genuine 2025 Pew data points are the parents survey (37% of kids 12 and under use a voice assistant) and the July 2025 search study, which measured AI summaries, not voice.
The parents survey is the most detailed voice data Pew has released since 2017. Use climbs steeply with the child’s age:
| Child’s age | 2020 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 | 11% | 12% |
| 2 to 4 | 26% | 27% |
| 5 to 7 | 46% | 36% |
| 8 to 10 | 47% | 46% |
| 11 (2020) / 11 to 12 (2025) | 43% | 53% |
| All children in the survey | 36% | 37% |
Source: Pew Research Center, How Parents Manage Screen Time for Kids, appendix table. Pew flags the drop for ages 5 to 7 as statistically significant. The 2020 survey covered children 11 and younger; 2025 covered 12 and younger.
Pew’s newest adult figure: 35% own a smart speaker (2026)
In its February 2026 survey, Pew asked adults which AI-enabled devices they have at home. About a third said a smart speaker. The appendix tables show ownership peaks among adults 30 to 49 and rises sharply with income: 27% of lower-income adults, 37% of middle-income and 46% of upper-income adults.
Compare that with Pew’s 2019 reading of 25%. The two questions are worded differently (2026 asks about devices “that use AI”), so treat the 10-point gap as direction, not a precise change.
Pew’s 2025 search study: what it says about AI answers
The July 2025 study tracked 68,879 real Google searches by 900 adults. When an AI summary appeared, users clicked a regular result on 8% of visits, against 15% without one. Only 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the summary. Summaries appeared on 18% of all searches, but on 60% of searches that started with who, what, when or why, and on 53% of searches of 10 words or more. That matters for voice: if your customers speak full questions to their phone, those are the phrasings most likely to be answered by an AI summary rather than a list of links.
Voice search statistics 2022: the numbers that hold up
Most 2022 voice search stats trace back to one source: The Smart Audio Report, Spring 2022 from NPR and Edison Research. It was an online survey of U.S. adults run February 28 to April 18, 2022, with 1,190 smart speaker owners, 560 voice users without a smart speaker and 584 non-users. Its headline ownership and usage figures come from Edison’s Infinite Dial study.
- 35% of Americans 18+ owned a smart speaker in 2022, about 100 million people, up from 32% (about 82 million) in 2021.
- 62% of Americans 18+ used a voice assistant on any device.
- 57% of voice assistant users used voice commands at least once a day, up from 52% in spring 2020 and 46% in winter 2019.
- 41% of smart speaker owners agreed they are likely to respond to ads on smart speakers, rising to 53% among owners who had heard an ad on the device.
Where people used voice assistants, 2020 against 2022 (share of the U.S. online population 18+ saying they currently use a voice assistant on each device):
| Device | 2020 | 2022 | Change (points) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smartphone | 51% | 56% | +5 |
| Smart speaker | 27% | 35% | +8 |
| TV or TV remote | 24% | 34% | +10 |
| Car | 23% | 29% | +6 |
| Computer or laptop | 21% | 24% | +3 |
| Tablet | 19% | 24% | +5 |
| Household appliance | 9% | 12% | +3 |
Source: NPR and Edison Research, The Smart Audio Report, Spring 2022. The point changes are our arithmetic from the report’s figures.
A 2022 stat almost everyone misreads: “12.4 voice requests per week”
Many roundups say smart speaker owners make 12.4 (or “nearly 11”) voice requests a week. The report says something different. 12.4 is the average number of different types of tasks owners request in a typical week, up from 7.5 in 2017. For smartphone voice assistants the figure was 10.7 task types in 2022, up from 8.8 in 2020. It measures breadth of use, not the number of commands. Nobody in this report counted total requests.
Voice search and smart speaker statistics by year, 2014 to 2026
The smart speaker column is the one consistent annual series available: Edison Research’s Infinite Dial, which measures the U.S. population aged 12 and older each January. The right column lists the most reliable other reading published for that year.
| Year | Own a smart speaker (U.S. 12+, Infinite Dial) | Other key reading that year |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Not measured | Baidu: 1 in 10 queries came through speech (Andrew Ng, via VentureBeat) |
| 2016 | Not measured | Google: 20% of queries in its Android app in the U.S. were voice (Sundar Pichai, Google I/O 2016) |
| 2017 | 7% | Pew: 46% of U.S. adults use a voice assistant |
| 2018 | 18% | GlobalWebIndex: 27% of the global online population used mobile voice search in the past month (U.S.: 25%) |
| 2019 | 23% | Pew: 25% of U.S. adults have a smart speaker |
| 2020 | 27% | Pew: 36% of parents say their child (11 or younger) uses a voice assistant |
| 2021 | 33% | Smart Audio Report: 32% of adults 18+ own a smart speaker |
| 2022 | 35% | Smart Audio Report: 62% of adults 18+ use a voice assistant on any device |
| 2023 | 36% | Apple launches Business Connect, which feeds business details to Siri and Maps |
| 2024 | 34% | Apple: Siri handles about 1.5 billion requests a day (Craig Federighi) |
| 2025 | 35% (about 101 million) | Amazon: over 600 million Alexa devices. Pew: 37% of kids 12 and under use a voice assistant |
| 2026 | 39% (about 112 million) | Pew: 35% of U.S. adults have a smart speaker. Edison: 52% of adults use an AI chatbot weekly |
Sources: Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026 (2017 to 2026 series and 112 million estimate); The Infinite Dial 2025 (101 million estimate); other sources linked in the sections below.
Two things stand out. Ownership rose from 7% to 33% between 2017 and 2021, then sat between 33% and 36% for five years. The 2026 jump to 39% needs a caveat: Edison changed its method. The 2025 study surveyed 5,020 people (1,006 by phone, 4,014 online). The 2026 study surveyed 2,050 people online, half from the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel and half from a non-probability sample. Part of that four-point rise may come from the method change, not from new owners.
Owning a speaker is not the same as using it for audio. Infinite Dial 2025 found 18% of Americans 12+ listened to audio through a smart speaker in the last week (17% in 2024). If you plan audio ads around smart speakers, our podcast advertising statistics cover the audience numbers that matter for buying.
Official figures from Amazon, Google and Apple
None of the three platforms publishes what share of searches are spoken. Here is everything they have put on record that you can cite.
| Company | Figure | Date and source |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | “Over 600 million Alexa devices out there today” | Feb 26, 2025, Amazon’s Alexa+ announcement |
| Amazon | Alexa+ costs $19.99 a month, free for Prime members | Feb 26, 2025, same announcement |
| Amazon | 97% of devices Amazon ever shipped can support Alexa+; over 1 million users had access by June 2025, “tens of millions” can opt in | Jan 12, 2026, Daniel Rausch to TechCrunch |
| “In the US, on our mobile app in Android, one in five queries, 20% of our queries, are voice queries” | May 2016, Sundar Pichai, Google I/O keynote. Still the last voice share Google has stated publicly that we could find. | |
| Gemini for Home “will replace Google Assistant on existing speakers and displays” | Aug 20, 2025, Google blog | |
| Search Live: back-and-forth voice conversations inside AI Mode, launched for Labs users | June 18, 2025, Google blog; opened to everyone in the U.S. in English in Sept 2025 (Search Engine Roundtable) | |
| Apple | Siri processes “something like 1.5 billion requests every day” | Oct 2024, Craig Federighi in a Wall Street Journal interview, quoted by Om Malik |
| Apple | Business Connect reaches “more than a billion Apple users across Apple Maps, Messages, Wallet, Siri, and other apps”; free | Jan 11, 2023, Apple Newsroom |
Read these carefully. Amazon’s 600 million counts devices shipped, not active users. Apple’s 1.5 billion counts all Siri requests (timers, music, messages), not searches. Google’s 20% applied to one app on one operating system in one country, nine years before Search Live.
Where the famous voice search stats came from
The top-ranking voice search pages repeat a handful of numbers without dates or context. Here is what each one actually measured.
| Claim you will see | Usually credited to | Actual origin | What it really measured | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “50% of all searches will be voice by 2020” | comScore | Andrew Ng, then Baidu’s chief scientist, at a Gigaom meetup in September 2014 | A five-year prediction that half of Baidu queries would be “on speech or images” | Misattributed and misquoted. Do not use. |
| “20% of mobile searches are voice” | Sundar Pichai, Google I/O, May 2016 | Queries in Google’s Android app in the U.S. only | Real, but narrow and 10 years old | |
| “27% of people use voice search on mobile” | GlobalWebIndex, Q1 2018, 90,021 internet users aged 16 to 64 | Used voice search or voice commands on mobile in the past month, global. U.S. figure was 25%. | Real, but 2018 data | |
| “8.4 billion voice assistants in use” | Statista | Juniper Research, April 2020 (reported by audioXpress) | A forecast for 2024 made in 2020, from a base of 4.2 billion devices. Juniper itself said fewer than half of voice-capable TVs would actually use the function. | A forecast, not a count |
| “Smart speaker owners make 12.4 voice requests a week” | NPR and Edison | Smart Audio Report, Spring 2022 | Average number of different task types per week | Misread |
| “1 billion voice searches per month” | Various roundups | We could not find a primary report | Unknown | Untraceable. Do not use. |
How the “50% by 2020” myth started
On September 20, 2014, VentureBeat reported a talk Andrew Ng gave at a Gigaom deep learning meetup. His words: “In five years, we think 50 percent of queries will be on speech or images.” At the time, he said, 1 in 10 Baidu queries already came through speech. So the original claim was about one Chinese search engine, combined speech with image search, and was a prediction rather than a measurement. SEO consultant Brodie Clark asked comScore about the attribution in January 2020 and reported that comScore had not published the figure. If you see “comScore, 50% by 2020” in a deck or a vendor pitch, that tells you the author did not check sources.
Voice assistants and AI chatbots in 2026
The line between a voice assistant and an AI chatbot is disappearing. Alexa+ runs on generative AI, Gemini is taking over Google’s speakers, and Search Live lets people speak to Google’s AI Mode. The 2026 numbers on AI use now dwarf the voice numbers:
- 49% of U.S. adults use AI chatbots, and 42% use them to search for information (Pew, Feb 2026). Pew notes its 2024 comparison figure of 33% used different question wording.
- 52% of Americans 18+ use at least one AI chatbot weekly (Edison Research AI User Metrics, Feb 6 to 23, 2026, in the Infinite Dial 2026).
- 60% of U.S. adults say they read AI summaries at the top of search results; 30% say they do not (Pew, Feb 2026).
For the full picture of AI search adoption and referral traffic, see our AI search statistics for 2026.
How voice and AI assistants affect local SEO now
The old voice SEO advice (write for “near me”, chase position zero) is out of date. Spoken questions now go to assistants that either pull from a maps listing or generate an AI answer with links. Google’s own documentation is clear on what feeds each.
- Local results still run on three factors. Google says local ranking is based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that businesses with complete, accurate, verified information are more likely to show. I treat that profile as the main input for spoken local requests on Google, because it is what Maps and the local pack display.
- There is no special “AI optimization” for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Google’s AI features guide says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and that there are “no additional requirements.” It also tells site owners to keep Business Profile and Merchant Center information current, and to make structured data match visible text.
- Search Live uses query fan-out. Google says Search Live runs several related searches across subtopics and shows web links on screen. One spoken question can therefore surface pages for several sub-questions, which gives a page that answers one narrow question well a way in.
- Speakable markup is not for local businesses. Google’s speakable documentation lists it as a beta for news content, for U.S. users with Google Home devices set to English. A plumber or a law firm gains nothing from adding it.
- Siri answers from Apple’s own data. Apple says Business Connect place cards appear across Maps, Messages, Wallet and Siri. If you have only claimed your Google profile, you are missing the iPhone assistant entirely.
Voice and AI assistant local readiness check
Run this against your own business. Each line names the assistant it feeds and the pass condition.
| Check | Feeds | Pass if | Fail if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile verified | Google Search, Maps, Gemini | Profile shows as verified and you can edit it | Unclaimed, or owned by a former agency or employee |
| Hours and special hours | Google Search and Maps, Siri | Holiday hours entered for the next holiday | Regular hours only, or hours that differ from your website |
| Apple Business Connect place card | Siri, Apple Maps | Claimed, with the same name, address, phone and hours as Google | Not claimed, or old details |
| Service pages indexed and snippet-eligible | AI Overviews, AI Mode, Search Live | URL Inspection shows “URL is on Google”; no nosnippet on key pages | Not indexed, or nosnippet or max-snippet:0 set by a plugin |
| Question-led answers on service pages | AI summaries (60% of who/what/when/why searches showed one in Pew’s study) | Each top customer question has a heading and a direct 2 to 3 sentence answer | Answers buried in long paragraphs or only in a PDF |
| LocalBusiness structured data | Google knowledge panel | Includes name and address (Google’s required properties) and matches the visible page | Schema shows a different address, phone or hours than the page |
| Speakable markup | Google Assistant news reading | Not used (unless you are a news publisher) | Added by a “voice SEO” vendor to a service site |
For the structured data piece, our guide to schema markup for AI search citations covers what to mark up and what to leave alone. The broader map pack work sits in our local SEO playbook for service businesses, and the benchmark numbers are in local SEO statistics. In my view, a professional-service firm should spend its effort on the profile data and question-led pages above, not on anything sold as “voice search optimization.” If you want help working out which of these checks your site fails, you can book a consultation.
Which voice stat to quote, and how to cite it
Copy the line that matches what you need. Each states its source, date and base so a reader can check it.
| You need | Quote this |
|---|---|
| Latest Pew number on voice | “35% of U.S. adults say they have a smart speaker (Pew Research Center, survey conducted Feb. 17 to 23, 2026).” |
| Pew 2025 voice data | “37% of parents of children 12 and under say their child uses a voice-activated assistant (Pew Research Center, May 2025).” |
| Overall adult voice assistant use | “62% of U.S. adults 18+ used a voice assistant on any device in 2022 (NPR and Edison Research, Smart Audio Report).” Note it is the latest published adult figure. |
| Smart speaker ownership trend | “39% of Americans 12+ own a smart speaker, an estimated 112 million people (Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2026).” |
| Voice share of all searches | Nothing. No platform or independent study has published a current figure. Say so. |
| Alexa scale | “Amazon says there are over 600 million Alexa devices (Amazon, Feb 2025).” |
If you are building a stats page of your own, the same rule applies to any number: find the original release, note the fieldwork date and who was asked, and drop anything you cannot trace. Our search engine market share page follows the same approach for search engine usage data.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a Pew Research report on voice assistant usage in 2025?
No. Pew has not published a 2025 report on adult voice assistant use. Its 2025 voice figure comes from a May 2025 survey of 3,054 parents: 37% say their child aged 12 or younger uses a voice-activated assistant. Pew's July 2025 search study measured Google AI summaries, not voice. Its newest adult figure, from February 2026, is that 35% of U.S. adults have a smart speaker.
What percentage of Americans use voice assistants, according to Pew?
Pew last measured overall adult voice assistant use in spring 2017, when 46% of U.S. adults said they used one, mostly on smartphones (42%). Only 8% used a standalone speaker then. Pew later measured smart speaker ownership instead: 25% of adults in June 2019 and 35% in February 2026, when the question asked about devices that use AI.
What were the key voice search stats in 2022?
The NPR and Edison Research Smart Audio Report (spring 2022) found that 35% of Americans 18 and older owned a smart speaker and 62% used a voice assistant on some device. Smartphones led at 56%, followed by smart speakers at 35% and TVs at 34%. Among voice assistant users, 57% used voice commands at least once a day.
How many Americans own a smart speaker in 2026?
Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026 puts ownership at 39% of Americans aged 12 and older, an estimated 112 million people, up from 35% in 2025. Edison changed its survey method in 2026, so part of that rise may reflect methodology. Pew's February 2026 survey found 35% of U.S. adults have a smart speaker.
Are 50% of searches done by voice?
No. The '50% of searches will be voice by 2020' line is usually credited to comScore, but it comes from a 2014 prediction by Andrew Ng, then at Baidu, that half of Baidu queries would be 'on speech or images' within five years. No platform or independent study publishes a current voice share of all searches.
How many Alexa devices are there?
Amazon said in its February 26, 2025 Alexa+ announcement that there are over 600 million Alexa devices. In January 2026, Amazon's Daniel Rausch told TechCrunch that 97% of devices Amazon ever shipped can support Alexa+. Those figures count devices shipped, not active users.
Does voice search matter for local SEO in 2026?
Yes, but not as a separate tactic. Google says local results depend on relevance, distance and prominence, and AI features need no special optimization beyond being indexed and snippet-eligible. Keep your Google Business Profile and Apple Business Connect place card complete and consistent, and answer customer questions directly on your service pages.
Channel benchmarks