How to Get Your Business Listed on Alexa

Voice search is slowly but surely turning into the go-to way for how consumers look for answers online. By the end of 2020, 50% of all searches on the Internet are expected to be voice searches.

Today, 40 million Americans own a smart speaker for their home. By 2022, more than 50% of US households are expected to own one (Review 42). Smart speakers are powered by voice assistants. So it’s not surprising that more and more business owners are searching for how to get their businesses listed.

To get your business listed on Alexa, you can either sign up for Yext or you can claim and optimize your business’ Yelp page. Yext and Yelp are the primary sources of information for results in near me voice search on Alexa.

In this post, I’m going to help you get your business listed on Amazon Alexa. Keep on reading if that sounds like what you came here for.

What Is the Market Share of Amazon Alexa?

Amazon Alexa is part of what I call “the big four voice assistants.” There’s also Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana.

Many people assume that, because Amazon has its own e-commerce platform and sells a lot of devices, Alexa should have the most market share in voice search. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not necessarily true.

In a recent study of AI-powered voice technology and voice assistants called The 2019 Voice Report, Microsoft found that Google Assistant and Apple Siri each had a 36% market share, Amazon Alexa had 25%, and Microsoft Cortana came fourth at 19% market share.

Consumers are using voice search in a variety of ways today, from asking for directions while on the move to searching for a quick fact that they’re curious about. According to Microsoft, 47% of them search for a business using voice.

Does Local Voice Search Work?

When someone asks their voice assistant for a local business, they do a local voice search.

Voice assistants are becoming the norm on phones, tablets, computers, and smart speakers. So it’s a reasonable assumption to make that more and more consumers will be looking up local businesses using voice search.

But don’t take my words for granted. Here are some stats from a 2018 study of voice search for local business conducted by BrightLocal:

• 58% of consumers had used voice search to find a local business
• 46% of voice search users looked for a local business on a daily basis
• 27% of consumers visited a local business after voice-searching for it

As a business owner, one of the most important things you can do is to make sure that your business is listed on each of the big four voice assistants.

Here’s how that can happen on Amazon Alexa, the third most popular voice assistant.

How Do I Get My Business Listed on Alexa Voice Search?

Amazon Alexa gets its local business data from two sources: Yelp and Yext. To get your business listed on Alexa, you should either be a Yext customer or you should claim and optimize your Yelp listing.

Getting Listed on Alexa as a Yext Customer

Yext is a tech company that helps brands improve the search experience for their websites’ visitors. Simply said, Yext gives you a really good search box that you put on your website, so that users will find all the information they need without bouncing to Google (and ending up on the websites of your competitors).

Yext also helps you manage business listings on 50+ online platforms, including Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Foursquare, and others, thanks to the partnerships that it’s built with these companies.

If you are an existing Yext customer, your business data will automatically be shared with Amazon Alexa. There are no additional steps that you need to take to get your business listed on it.

Now, there *could be* a way to get your business listed in the Yext database without signing up as a paid Yext customer.

In 2015, Yahoo outsourced the management of their free Small Business Listings to Yext. And you can still submit your site to get listed for free through this URL: http://www.yext.com/pl/yahoo-claims/index.html.

Here’s how:

I haven’t found a way to *confirm* that getting listed for free on Yahoo Small Business Listings also gets you listed on Alexa, but some of you may see it as an extra step worth taking.

Amazon and Yext started working together in 2018. At the time, the data points that Yext shared with Amazon were: business name, location, phone, and working hours.

Getting Listed on Alexa Through Yelp

Yelp is the online business directory we all know. There are a thousand reasons why you, as a business owner, should claim and optimize your Yelp business page. If you want to get your business listed on Amazon Alexa, you have one more.

To see how to claim your Yelp business page, check out this to-the-point and up-to-date guide from Adam Koven:

In Conclusion

To get your business listed on Amazon Alexa, make sure it’s listed on one of its two primary sources: Yext and Yelp.

Yext is by far the easiest way to get listed on Amazon Alexa (and some other local business listings). Nevertheless, it comes at an additional cost and there is an alternative to it.

The alternative is to get your business listed on Yelp, making sure that you’ve claimed and optimized its page. If you are a small business owner, it’s a good idea for your business to be present on Yelp in the first place.

Hope this helped. Have fun getting your business listed on Amazon Alexa. And I hope this brings you many new and soon-to-be loyal customers 😉 .