Perth search demand rose, then slumped in 2026

01 · The headline number

Perth search demand fell 36% in a year

We pulled monthly Google search volume for 80-plus Perth service keywords, "web design agency perth", "lawyers perth", "pest control perth" and the like, across 21 industries, from January 2024 through August 2026, then compared like-for-like windows: January-August 2026 against January-August 2025.

Demand fell 36% year-on-year. It rose 14% from 2024 to 2025, then broke in June 2025 and has not recovered, leaving the January-August run of 2026 about 27% below the same months of 2024.

The timing is the story. Demand did not drift down: it broke in June 2025 and has stayed down, with 2026 averaging 68,230 searches a month across the tracked keywords against 106,508 over the same months of 2025. The break sits inside the period in which Google's AI Overviews scaled across Australia, and our companion study found AI Overviews now appear on roughly 38% of Perth search results. We can't prove causation from volume data alone, but the matched-window comparison is robust, and the most plausible single driver is the one reshaping every results page in the country: AI answers are absorbing searches that used to be typed, repeated, and clicked.

02 · The demand curve

The rise, the peak, and the fall

Here is total monthly search volume across all 21 tracked industries, every month from January 2024 to August 2026. Demand climbed to a peak of about 149,180 searches in March 2025, then broke in June 2025 and drifted lower through 2026 to around 51,890 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 fall is broad, not isolated. All 21 industries we tracked recorded lower demand in the January-August window of 2026 than in 2025. When every category turns down together, in the same window, it points to something happening at the level of the search engine rather than 21 separate local markets all cooling at once by chance.

03 · What Perth searches for

The demand league table

Average monthly searches in the January-August window of each year, for 2024, 2025 and 2026, with the year-on-year change at each step. Read a row left to right: 13 of 21 categories rose into 2025, and all 21 fell in 2026. Web Design, Lawyers and Pest Control lead by volume; the smallest categories swing wildly on tiny numbers, so read those with caution.

Average monthly searches in the January-August window of each year, Perth-qualified keywords. Click an industry to open its month-by-month volume. Source: Google Keyword Planner via DataForSEO.

The decline is universal. All 21 categories fell in 2026. Be careful with the smallest rows, the marketing and niche categories swing violently because they sit on just a few hundred searches or fewer, where Google's volume buckets round hard. The big, steady categories, mortgage brokers and accountants, are the reliable signal, and they're pointing down.

04 · Since the last edition

April to August: what moved

The previous edition of this report ended at April 2026. Between then and August 2026, total monthly demand across the 21 industries went from 64,350 to 51,890 searches (−19%), and 15 of the 21 categories fell further. The steepest falls among the sizeable categories were SEO Agency (−80%), Pest Control (−47%) and Web Design (−36%).

Search volumes for both months are from the September 2026 pull. The previous edition reported 64,250 for April 2026; this pull gives 64,350 (+100, under 1%), because Google Keyword Planner revises history. Cost-per-click is volume-weighted across the keywords Google priced in each industry, from the pull that built each edition; the June 2026 column is recomputed from that pull's keyword data under this edition's weighting, so a few figures differ from the June 2026 page, which counted a keyword with no reported rate as $0. Source: Google Keyword Planner via DataForSEO.

Clicks moved about as much as demand did. The biggest rises in cost were SEO Agency ($27.61 to $86.82, +214%), Cleaning Services ($14.27 to $22.39, +57%) and Pest Control ($17.08 to $23.23, +36%). The biggest falls were Accountants ($18.93 to $14.42, −24%), Dentists ($25.35 to $20.51, −19%) and Digital Marketing ($35.68 to $30.43, −15%). A category whose demand fell while its click price rose is one where fewer searches are being fought over by the same advertisers; where both fell, advertisers have pulled back with the demand.

05 · The cost to compete

What a Perth click costs

Demand is only half the picture, the other half is what it costs to capture it. Here is the average cost-per-click (AUD) for each Perth category with enough advertiser data to report.

SEO Agency ($87) and Paid Marketing ($55) command the dearest clicks in Perth. The dearest clicks are in marketing itself, the classic big-city agency bidding war. At the other end, Pilates and Vets are the cheapest to advertise against. Note that Google Ads returned no reliable cost-per-click, too few advertisers bid on those Perth-specific terms for Google to report a rate.

06 · Perth vs the nation

Where Perth is dearer, and where it's a bargain

Is Perth an expensive place to advertise? It depends on the category. We compared each industry's Perth cost-per-click to the national average. 15 of the 19 categories with data cost more here; 4 cost less. Green means Perth is cheaper than the national average, a relative bargain.

Perth cost-per-click from the September 2026 pull against the series' national baseline (June 2026 pull). Source: Google Keyword Planner via DataForSEO.

Paid Marketing (+112%), Cleaning Services (+104%) and Mortgage Brokers (+94%) cost the most relative to the national rate, the classic smaller-market dynamic, where a handful of advertisers bid up a scarce pool of searches. By contrast Real Estate (−47%), Lawyers (−25%) and Digital Marketing (−23%) are genuine bargains, worth knowing before you set a bid cap off a national figure.

07 · What to do about it

Five takeaways for Perth businesses

1. Never size a budget off one year. The same keywords rose 14% then fell 36% in two years. Plan against the multi-year trend, not a single snapshot, and re-pull your category's volumes at least twice a year.
2. Assume AI is eating the top of your funnel, and measure it. Demand fell across all 21 categories in 2026, alongside AI Overviews now on roughly 38% of Perth results. Shift the goal from "rank #1" to "be the source the AI cites", and track AI-answer visibility, not just classic rankings.
3. Defend the transactional, local queries. Every query in this study is a "[service] perth" search and even these fell 36%; they still convert, so concentrate effort on them and on "[service] [suburb]" rather than on the explainer content an AI answer absorbs.
4. Price paid search against Perth, not the nation. Costs swing wildly by category here. Set bid caps and channel budgets off the Perth figures in this report, not a generic national benchmark, or you'll mis-price both ends.
5. Own organic and AI-citation visibility, it compounds. With demand falling and the dearest clicks in marketing itself, every lead earned through organic search, content and citations is worth multiples of a bought one.