How the market data is built.

Source

Search terms, monthly search ranges and bids come from Google Ads Keyword Planner (keyword ideas), English, Google Search, for the 12 months from September 2025 to August 2026. We pulled each industry for the United States and separately for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, starting from 8 to 10 seed terms per industry and keeping only ideas that match that industry. Population figures are the US Census Bureau's Vintage 2024 estimates.

What the numbers mean

• Monthly searches are the ranges Google shows (for example 1K-10K). Google does not give exact counts without an active, spending account, so we never present a range as a precise number.
• Top-of-page bid is Google's high-range estimate of what advertisers have paid for ads shown at the top of results for that term. It is a bid estimate, not the price any one advertiser pays per click, and not a cost per lead. A lead usually takes many clicks.
• Distinct terms counts search terms with 100 or more monthly searches after removing close variants.

Cleaning steps

• Only service searches count. Terms naming a retailer, a product manufacturer, a do-it-yourself product or a how-to task are removed. So is any term containing a word that appears in fewer than three of the industry's terms, which removes individual business names and most place names.
• Close variants count once. Terms with the same words after removing "near me", "close to me" and plurals ("plumbers near me", "near me plumber") count as one term, using the highest volume range.
• Off-topic ideas are dropped with a per-industry match list, so unrelated terms that share a word do not count.
• Tables show terms with a bid estimate. Terms where Google gives no bid are counted but not listed.

Rankings, bids and the per-resident index

States are ranked by breadth: the number of distinct service terms with 100 or more monthly searches, with the sum of range midpoints as a tiebreak. Because Google's ranges are wide, pages describe position as a tier (top 5, top 10, upper half, lower half) rather than an exact place, and states close together should be treated as similar. The count covers the 50 states and the District of Columbia where data exists.

A state's median bid estimate is compared with the typical state: the median of all published state medians for that industry, built the same way. The national figures on industry pages come from a separate, longer national term list and are not compared with state figures.

The per-resident index divides a state's summed range midpoints (terms at 100+ searches only) by its population and compares it with all states combined, where 100 is the national average. Above 250 the index is shown as an outlier, because that can reflect a quirk in Google's state ranges as easily as a real market. Midpoint sums are an index, not a count of searches.

When a page is published

A state report exists only when the industry has a full, fact-checked playbook and the state has at least 15 distinct service terms at 100 or more monthly searches. State reports are not submitted to search engines until each carries state-specific facts from primary sources, such as licensing and advertising rules.

Limits

• Keyword Planner reflects Google Search only. It does not include Bing, maps-only searches, AI assistants, social platforms or referrals.
• Bids move with competition and season. Treat them as a snapshot of the period above.
• Guides cite their own sources. Where a guide uses this data it says so and links here.