Perth search demand surged, then slumped in 2026

01 · The headline number

Perth search demand fell 37% in a year

We pulled monthly Google search volume for 80-plus Perth service keywords, "plumber perth", "mortgage broker perth", "dentist perth" and the like, across 21 industries, from January 2024 through April 2026, then compared like-for-like windows: January–April 2026 against January–April 2025.

Demand fell 37% year-on-year, and it fell from a high: the same basket of searches had surged +29% from 2024 to 2025 before dropping away in 2026. By April 2026, demand sat about 18% below its early-2024 level.

The timing points in one direction. The break happens in 2026, the same window 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 April 2026. Demand climbed to a peak of about 149,220 searches in March 2025, then fell away through 2026 to around 64,250 by April.

The 2026 fall is broad, not isolated. Of the 21 industries we tracked, 21 recorded lower demand in 2026 than in 2025. When almost 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–April window of each year, for 2024, 2025 and 2026, with the year-on-year change at each step. Read a row left to right to watch each category rise into 2025, then fall in 2026. Web Design, Lawyers and Pest Control lead by volume; the smallest categories swing wildly on tiny numbers, so read those with caution. Web design is unusually strong in Perth, the biggest category in the city by search volume.

Average monthly searches in the January–April window of each year, Perth-qualified keywords. Source: Google Keyword Planner via DataForSEO.

The decline is near-universal. 21 of the 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, stable categories, pest control, the trades, legal, are the reliable signal, and they're pointing down.

04 · 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 (top-of-page, AUD) for each Perth category with enough advertiser data to report.

Electricians ($47) and Web Design ($41) command the dearest clicks in Perth. Perth's dearest clicks are in the trades and web build (electricians $47, web design $41), not marketing. At the other end, Yoga and Vets are the cheapest to advertise against. Note that Paid Marketing returned no reliable cost-per-click, too few advertisers bid on those Perth-specific terms for Google to report a rate.

05 · 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. 11 of the 19 categories with data cost more here; 8 cost less. Green means Perth is cheaper than the national average, a relative bargain.

Mechanics (+88%), Accountants (+86%), Mortgage Brokers (+82%) 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 Air Conditioning (−0%), Pest Control (−6%), Digital Marketing (−9%) are genuine bargains, worth knowing before you set a bid cap off a national figure.

06 · What to do about it

Five takeaways for Perth businesses

1. Never size a budget off one year. The same keywords rose 29% then fell 37% 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 21 of 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. "[service] perth" and "[service] [suburb]" searches still convert and are the ones AI is least able to answer. Concentrate effort there rather than on the explainer content AI is absorbing.
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. It is how our team runs Perth Google Ads for clients.
5. Own organic and AI-citation visibility, it compounds. With demand falling and the dearest clicks running into the $40–60 range, every lead earned through organic search, content and citations is worth multiples of a bought one. It is the focus of our Perth SEO work.