How often Americans search for contractors: 12 trades in 30 US cities

How often do people in US cities search for a plumber, a roofer or a moving company? We pulled the Google search data for 12 trades in 30 US cities: how many searches there are per month, which month is the busiest and what a click on an ad costs. The full data is at the end as a free download.

Own analysis of Google search data (September 2025 to August 2026), 12 trades × 30 US cities; method: section “How the numbers were produced”; data: CSV.

Key findings

• Moving is the most-searched trade. "Movers" plus a city name averages 213,670 searches a month across the 30 cities, nearly twice as many as "plumber" plus a city (109,390).
• Spring is the busy season for home repairs. Plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and painting all had their busiest month in March 2026. HVAC searches doubled from 34,420 in November 2025 to 69,830 in March 2026.
• Garage door repair has the most expensive clicks. Advertisers paid a median of $43.38 per click, five times the $8.69 for landscaping.
• Urgent searches cost more than twice as much. A click on "emergency plumber" has a median price of $84.79, against $35.60 for "plumber".
• More people search for mold remediation than for water damage restoration: 17,460 against 12,810 searches a month, and more in 21 of the 30 cities.
• Chicago, Austin and Houston lead with 50,750, 49,480 and 44,380 searches a month across the 12 trades. One value has a large influence: "movers Austin" has 22,200 searches a month, the highest single value in the data and about 45 percent of Austin's total.
• Home systems (plumbing, HVAC and electrical) add up to 191,560 searches a month and peak in March 2026, like each of its three trades. A cluster can peak in a different month than its trades: roof and exterior is busiest in September 2025, although roofing and painting each peak in March 2026 and garage door repair in January 2026.

Your trade in your city

TradeAllElectricalGarage door repairHouse cleaningHVACJunk removalLandscapingMovingPaintingPest controlPlumbingRoofingWater damage restoration

CityAllAtlantaAustinBostonCharlestonCharlotteChicagoColumbiaColumbusDallasDenverDetroitFort WorthHoustonIndianapolisJacksonvilleLas VegasLos AngelesMiamiMobileNashvilleNew YorkPhiladelphiaPhoenixSan AntonioSan DiegoSan FranciscoSan JoseSavannahSeattleWashington

Copy link to this view

A typical city runs from 260 searches a month for Painting to 4,900 for Moving.

• Moving4,900
• Plumbing3,600
• Pest control1,900
• HVAC1,600
• Electrical1,300
• House cleaning1,300
• Junk removal1,300
• Roofing1,300
• Garage door repair1,150
• Landscaping1,000
• Water damage restoration390
• Painting260

Median city for each trade

Trade	Median searches a month	Busiest month	Click price (median)
Moving	4,900	7,350 searches in January 2026 and February 2026	$23.89
Plumbing	3,600	4,400 searches in September 2025, February 2026 and March 2026	$35.60
Pest control	1,900	2,900 searches in September 2025	$30.91
HVAC	1,600	1,900 searches in March 2026	$25.01
Electrical	1,300	1,750 searches in March 2026	$15.82
House cleaning	1,300	2,150 searches in March 2026	$10.83
Junk removal	1,300	1,600 searches in March 2026 and June 2026	$16.93
Roofing	1,300	1,600 searches in September 2025, October 2025 and March 2026	$14.75
Garage door repair	1,150	1,450 searches in September 2025	$43.38
Landscaping	1,000	1,600 searches in September 2025, March 2026 and April 2026	$8.69
Water damage restoration	390	480 searches in September 2025 and March 2026	$29.09
Painting	260	320 searches in March 2026	$13.31

Source: Local Reputation HQ (2026), Contractor Search Demand. Google Ads keyword data via DataForSEO, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026, rounded estimates. Each bar is one trade in one place. The line is that trade's median city. Download the data (CSV)

How the numbers were produced

We counted searches for "trade + city", for example "plumber Chicago" or "roofer Atlanta". The values come from Google Ads keyword data, pulled on October 7, 2026, and cover September 2025 to August 2026. Google describes this value as the average number of times people have searched for a keyword and its close variants (Google Ads Help: About Keyword Planner forecasts). Google also says the figures are rounded, so they do not always add up. Read the numbers as a size comparison, not as a count.

The 30 cities are a selection, not a ranking of the 30 largest: large metros such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, plus Charleston, Columbia, Savannah and Mobile. Each trade is one search term (for example "plumber", "roofer", "hvac", "movers"). Our trade lead guides use three search terms per trade in 15 cities from an earlier pull. Their totals are not comparable with the ones here.

The click price is the average amount advertisers have paid per click for that search term, in US dollars, as the keyword data reports it. Google defines the actual cost-per-click as the final amount an advertiser is charged for a click (Google Ads Help: Actual cost-per-click). The table shows the median across the cities.

Which trades are searched most

Moving is the largest by a wide margin, with 213,670 searches a month, nearly twice as many as plumbing (109,390). Click prices differ widely too: a click for garage door repair costs a median of 43.38 dollars, about five times the 8.69 dollars for landscaping. For house cleaning (29 cities), water damage restoration (26) and painting (27), Google reported a click price for fewer than 30 cities. Their median covers only those cities.

The busiest month depends on the trade

Five trades had their busiest month in March 2026: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and painting. Five peaked in September 2025: moving, pest control, house cleaning, junk removal and water damage restoration. Garage door repair peaked in January 2026 and landscaping in April 2026.

The swing can be large. HVAC searches reached 69,830 in March 2026 against 34,420 in November 2025, about twice as many. Electrical went from 32,060 in December 2025 to 63,050 in March 2026.

One twelve-month window cannot show whether the same pattern repeats next year. September 2025 is the first month of the window, so for the five trades that peaked then, the real peak may lie earlier.

By city

Chicago (50,750 searches a month), Austin (49,480) and Houston (44,380) lead when all 12 trades are added up. Washington (3,100), Mobile (4,250) and Savannah (6,060) are lowest, but see the note on place names below. We did not separate places that share a name or a word with something else, such as "Washington", "Columbus", "Columbia", "Charleston" and "Mobile". Treat these cities' numbers with caution.

Trade clusters

We also grouped the trades into five clusters. Locksmith, tree service and handyman are not part of this demand study. So here "Yard and pests" contains landscaping and pest control, and "Moving and odd jobs" contains moving only.

The jobs behind each trade

For each of the 12 trades we also pulled three jobs that customers search for together with the city. For plumbing, for example, these are "water heater repair", "drain cleaning" and "emergency plumber". The jobs are our choice, not a complete list.

Job (trade)	Searches per month	Cities with data	Cities pooled with the trade name	Click price (median, USD)
water heater repair (Plumbing)	6,790	28	0	45.34
drain cleaning (Plumbing)	5,720	28	0	47.35
emergency plumber (Plumbing)	10,450	30	0	84.79
emergency electrician (Electrical)	1,190	23	0	45.03
ev charger installation (Electrical)	730	13	0	19.85
electrical panel upgrade (Electrical)	300	9	0	–
roof repair (Roofing)	16,990	30	0	33.74
roof replacement (Roofing)	5,900	30	0	20.76
roof inspection (Roofing)	2,070	25	0	29.69
ac repair (HVAC)	35,570	30	0	44.96
furnace repair (HVAC)	6,890	29	0	49.60
ac installation (HVAC)	7,240	29	0	28.68
exterminator (Pest control)	69,250	30	25	30.34
termite control (Pest control)	3,110	30	0	29.50
bed bug exterminator (Pest control)	2,390	27	0	23.62
furniture removal (Junk removal)	2,620	25	0	15.32
appliance removal (Junk removal)	380	24	0	17.18
garage cleanout (Junk removal)	20	2	0	–
water damage repair (Water damage restoration)	1,720	29	0	29.77
mold remediation (Water damage restoration)	17,460	30	0	26.02
flood cleanup (Water damage restoration)	590	26	0	–
maid service (House cleaning)	89,830	30	10	11.59
deep cleaning service (House cleaning)	5,180	16	0	11.34
move out cleaning (House cleaning)	9,890	24	0	13.15
local movers (Moving)	7,490	29	0	22.10
long distance movers (Moving)	6,090	28	0	50.20
piano movers (Moving)	5,380	27	0	12.20
house painters (Painting)	12,800	28	6	15.75
interior painting (Painting)	4,880	29	1	12.42
exterior painting (Painting)	2,470	27	0	12.18
lawn care (Landscaping)	15,970	30	0	9.69
landscape design (Landscaping)	5,050	29	0	7.31
sod installation (Landscaping)	1,550	28	0	11.82
garage door spring repair (Garage door repair)	1,010	22	0	–
garage door opener repair (Garage door repair)	3,980	21	1	44.08
garage door installation (Garage door repair)	3,690	26	0	23.53

Source: Google Ads keyword data via DataForSEO, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026, rounded estimates; searches without data count as missing, not zero. Download the data (CSV)

Google counts close variants together. Sometimes it reports one pooled figure for a job and its trade name: for "exterminator" and "pest control" it gave the same numbers in 25 of 30 cities, for "maid service" and "house cleaning" in 10. The table shows these cities. We compare a job with its trade name only where Google reported the two separately.

Two jobs then draw clearly more searches than the trade name. The first is "mold remediation" (17,460 a month against 12,810 for "water damage restoration", more in 21 of 30 cities). The second is "maid service" (46,230 against 21,060 for "house cleaning" across the 20 cities with separate figures, more in 14 of them).

Some jobs cost far more per click than their trade name: "emergency plumber" has a median click price of 84.79 dollars against 35.60 for "plumber", and "long distance movers" 50.20 dollars against 23.89 for "movers".

For 159 of the 1,080 job searches Google reported no data. This was most often the case for "garage cleanout" (28 of 30 cities) and "electrical panel upgrade" (21), and most often in Mobile (26), Savannah (16), Washington and Columbia (13 each). These count as missing, not as zero, and the table shows in how many cities each job had data. A job and its trade name can overlap, so do not add them up.

What the numbers do not show

• Other words for the same trade. Only the wording we searched is counted. Google counts close variants of each keyword, so searches with other words are included only in part.
• More specific searches. Apart from the three jobs per trade above, searches such as "roof leak", or a neighborhood instead of the city, are not part of these numbers.
• Searches without a city name. They cannot be split by city, so they are not included.
• Searches are not jobs. A search is not a person who hires, and a person may search several times.

For contractors

What the busy months mean for planning your year is in the busy-season calendar for 12 trades. How contractors get leads is in how to get contractor leads, with a guide per trade for plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical, junk removal and water damage.

Data, citation and contact

All 360 values (12 trades × 30 cities) with monthly values and click prices: contractor-demand-2026-10.csv (comma-separated, UTF-8). The 1,080 job searches are in contractor-job-demand-2026-10.csv (same format; empty values mean Google reported no data).

The data is licensed under CC BY 4.0: you may use it freely, including in articles, newsletters and presentations. Please credit "Source: Local Reputation HQ (2026), Contractor Search Demand, localreputationhq.com" and link to this page.

Questions about the data or the method go to Priit Zirnask, founder of Local Reputation HQ: info@localreputationhq.com.

How many Google reviews contractors have in the same 30 cities is the subject of our second analysis: How many Google reviews do contractors have?