Technology continues to change the face of online marketing and those businesses that keep pace will benefit from being ready, able and willing to take advantage of such changes. Unfortunately, most business owners are too busy operating their business to keep pace and usually are behind the curve and scramble to catch up once the competition has over taken them.

Voice search technology is one of the latest developments that is proliferating but business owners are not usually aware of what the consequences are to their business. This article seeks to inform business owners of the pitfalls they face from both voice search technology and the growing reliance of consumers on reviews.

As online marketing evolves based on such technological developments, marketing agencies have watched how online directories and lead generation websites have incorporated reviews to provide their visitors with some basis for selecting one service or product provider from the others. As a result, such reviews can make or break a business, but how many businesses are paying attention to their reputation or if they are, how to fix a bad reputation or even false reviews by an unscrupulous competitor.

While in the past having your business appear on the first or first few pages of a google search was the goal. However, now that reviews and ratings appear with such search results, a low rated business loses all of the benefit of being listed high in google as consumers will gravitate to the highest rated businesses.

Voice searches now complicate the situation more as such searches comb the entire Internet in order to capture the most accurate and complete information; therein lies the problem. Voice searches may combine the results of 15 to 20 or more websites in order to present a complete picture of the business and unfortunately, most businesses are not providing sufficient, consistent or up to date information that the search engines prefer and thus their listing is not presented to the consumer: a huge unforced error.

Business owners that are concerned about not falling behind new developments should seek the advice and assistance of a qualified online marketing firm to provide the necessary assistance to make sure they are well positioned across the Internet to reap the benefits of voice search and a good reputation, rather than being left in the invisible world of unlisted businesses or overlooked poor reputation businesses.