Australian search demand peaked in 2025, then fell 37% across every market

01 · The headline number

Australian search demand fell 37% 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 August 2026. This page rolls all of it up into one national picture.

Demand rose, then collapsed. Across the six markets combined, search volume rose 11% from 2024 to 2025, peaked in March 2025, broke in June 2025, and the January-August window of 2026 came in 37% below the same months of 2025, about 31% below its 2024 level. The same shape repeats in market after market.

The most striking thing isn't the size of the fall, it's the uniformity. Every one of the 6 markets declined in 2026. Across all 124 market-and-industry combinations we measured, 123 fell. When demand drops by 37% in the same 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 August 2026. Demand climbed to a peak of about 769,830 searches in March 2025, then broke in June 2025 and drifted lower through 2026 to around 283,080 by August. The one-month spike in September 2025 reverts the next month, the signature of a Keyword Planner reporting artefact, so read the trend rather than that point. The chart's single highest month, September 2025, is that spike, not the peak of the trend.

This is a single, national-scale signal. Six markets that compete in different industries, at different sizes, with different seasonality, all trace the same line: a peak in early 2025, a break in May or June 2025, and a 2026 that sits well below it.

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.

Sunshine Coast (−42%) and Brisbane (−34%) show the largest net falls since 2024, while Adelaide (−22%) fell least. The direction, though, never changes: all 6 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.

Among the sizeable categories, the sharpest falls were Digital Marketing (−55%), Air Conditioning (−51%) and Lawyers (−50%); the most resilient were Vets (−23%), Mechanics (−24%) and Pest Control (−25%). Lawyers and Mortgage Brokers, categories where an AI Overview can answer the opening question ("how much can I borrow", "do I need a will"), sit among the five sharpest falls, the pattern the AI-search data predicts; Real Estate (−30%), Accountants (−32%) and Buyers Agents (−35%) fell less than the national −37%.

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 37% in the same months, in six different cities and 21 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 everywhere we measured. 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 sharpest national falls were in Digital Marketing, Air Conditioning and Lawyers, with research-heavy Mortgage Brokers close behind, the categories 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. Every query in this study is a "[service] [city]" search and even these fell 37%. They still end in a click far more often than an explainer query does, so they are where the remaining clicks live; concentrate there and on "[service] [suburb]".
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.