Market conditions

How expensive is your market?

When your CPC climbs, it helps to know whether your whole industry runs hot. This map sets every industry’s benchmark against its platform’s median, so you can see the climate you are bidding in.

Google Ads CPC, by industry

Hottest market

Legal

$9.87

2.3x the platform median

Coolest market

Ecommerce

$1.16

0.3x the platform median

The same click costs about 9 times more in legal than in ecommerce. Platform median: $4.22.

The climate map, industry by industry.

Hotter tiles cost more, or are harder to win, than the platform as a whole. Pick a platform and a metric, then a tile to see that industry in full.

Google Ads

Legal

CPC (cost per click) is $9.87, against a platform median of $4.22. That makes it scorching: far costlier than the platform.

Typical range: $5.92 to $17.

Demand right now, industry by industry.

Search interest over the last three months against the same months last year, with shifts that hit all of search taken out. Rising demand usually means more people ready to buy, and more advertisers bidding for them.

Rising fastest

• Pet Care searches for “pet sitter” +56%
• Solar searches for “solar panels” +56%
• Garage Door searches for “garage door repair” +42%
• Water Damage Restoration searches for “water damage restoration” +42%
• Insurance searches for “insurance quote” +38%
• Cleaning Services searches for “cleaning service” +32%
• Plumbing searches for “plumber” +30%
• Martial Arts searches for “martial arts classes” +24%

Cooling fastest

• Florist searches for “florist” -55%
• Crypto searches for “bitcoin” -35%
• Mortgage searches for “mortgage rates” -31%
• Event Planning searches for “event planner” -29%
• Security Systems searches for “home security system” -26%
• Cybersecurity searches for “cybersecurity” -22%
• Deck Building searches for “deck builder” -22%
• Food Beverage searches for “food delivery” -21%

Source: Google Trends, US search interest, through 2026-09. Year-on-year change relative to the median of 114 tracked industries.

What the climate tells you.

Judge yourself against your climate

A $6 CPC is expensive for ecommerce and cheap for legal. Compare your numbers with your industry’s tile, not the platform average.

Hot markets reward conversion rate

When clicks are costly for everyone, the teams that win convert more of them. Landing pages and offers matter more than bids.

Cool markets reward reach

Cheap clicks leave room to test audiences and creative. The risk there is volume without intent, so watch CPA, not CPC.

The climate is the backdrop. Your numbers are the forecast.

This map uses published benchmarks (Google Ads search figures from LocaliQ 2026 where they exist, otherwise Q1 2023 – Q4 2024), not live auction readings. Import a report from your ad platform to see where your own results sit against the industry you compete in.