Australian search demand peaked in 2025, then fell 38% across every market

01 · The headline number

Australian search demand fell 38% in 2026

We tracked more than 80 service keywords in each of six Australian markets, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and the Sunshine Coast, across 21 industries, month by month, from January 2024 to April 2026. This page rolls all of it up into one national picture.

Demand surged, then collapsed. Across the six markets combined, search volume rose +25% from 2024 to 2025, peaked, then fell 38% in 2026, finishing about 23% below its early-2024 level. The same arc, up then sharply down, repeats in market after market.

The most striking thing isn't the size of the fall, it's the uniformity. Every one of the six markets declined in 2026. Across all 123 market-and-industry combinations we measured, 120 fell. When demand drops by a third or more in the same twelve-month window across six independent geographies and almost every industry at once, it isn't local conditions, it's the search engine. The break coincides with Google's AI Overviews scaling across Australia, now appearing on roughly 38% of results nationally, absorbing the informational searches that used to be typed, repeated, and clicked.

02 · The national curve

One shape, six markets, repeated

Total monthly search volume across all six markets and 21 industries, every month from January 2024 to April 2026. Demand climbed to a peak of about 791,930 searches in September 2025, then fell away through 2026 to around 345,160 by April.

This is a single, national-scale signal. Six metros that compete in different industries, at different sizes, with different seasonality, all trace the same line: a build through 2024, a peak in early-to-mid 2025, and a steep, sustained decline through 2026.

03 · Every market fell

Not one market bucked the trend

Here is each market's total monthly search demand (summed across all tracked categories) for 2024, 2025 and 2026, with the 2026 change and the net move on 2024. Every row is red in 2026.

The eastern capitals fell hardest on a net basis, Sydney (−26%) and Brisbane (−22%) lead the decline since 2024, while the smaller markets, Adelaide and the Sunshine Coast, were more mixed: Adelaide's drop was the mildest of the capitals, but the Sunshine Coast fell furthest of all once its 2024 property-search boom unwound. The direction, though, never changes. All six are down.

04 · The industries hit hardest

Where the demand went, by industry

The same 21 industries, totalled across all six markets. Pest Control, Lawyers and Web Design are the biggest local-service search categories in the country; the 2026 column shows how broadly the decline reached.

High-consideration, research-heavy categories, mortgage broking, law, accounting, the ones where an AI Overview can answer the opening question ("how much can I borrow", "do I need a will", "what can I claim") show some of the sharpest falls. The transactional, find-a-provider categories held up comparatively better, which is exactly the pattern the AI-search data predicts.

05 · What it means

A platform shift, not a market cycle

It's tempting to read a demand drop as a soft economy or a quiet patch. But economies don't cool by the same third, in the same months, in six different cities and twenty different industries simultaneously. That synchronisation is the fingerprint of a change at the platform level, and the platform changed: 2025–26 is when Google's AI Overviews went from experiment to default across Australian search.

The mechanism is straightforward. When the answer appears at the top of the page, a share of searches that once turned into a click, or into a second, more specific search, now end at the overview. Fewer queries are logged, so reported search volume falls, even if underlying intent hasn't. For businesses, the demand was never only about volume; it's about who captures the attention that remains. Increasingly, that's whoever the AI cites.

Two honest caveats. Some of the fall is normalisation after an unusually strong 2025, and Google periodically revises its volume figures. We can't isolate those from the AI effect with volume data alone. But the matched-window method, the breadth across markets, and the timing all point the same way, and they line up precisely with our State of AI Search finding that AI Overviews now sit on roughly 38% of Australian results.

06 · What to do about it

Five takeaways, wherever you operate

1. Re-baseline your demand assumptions. If your forecasts or SEO business cases were built on 2025 search volumes, they're now too high almost everywhere. Re-pull your category and market at least twice a year and plan against the trend, not a peak.
2. Make AI-answer visibility a tracked metric. Classic rank tracking no longer captures what's happening above the organic results. Measure whether you're cited in AI Overviews for your key queries, in every market you serve, and treat that as the new page-one.
3. Shift content from explainer to answer. The categories falling hardest are the research-heavy ones AI summarises best. Structure content as direct, citable answers with real numbers and local specifics, rather than long "ultimate guide" articles the AI simply absorbs.
4. Double down on transactional and local intent. "[service] [city/suburb]" queries are the most resilient surface in every market, the searches AI is least able to satisfy. They're where the clicks still live. It is the focus of our SEO work.
5. Price paid search locally. Cost-per-click varies enormously by market and category, with no national rule of thumb that holds. Set bids and budgets off the figures for the specific market you're advertising in. It is how our team runs Google Ads management for clients.