Writing
Half the People Searching "Plumber Cairns" Are Not in Cairns
I pulled Google's search volume for three Cairns trades two ways. Around half the searches with the town name come from elsewhere, and locals mostly leave it out.
When an agency proposal says there are 2,400 searches a month for “dentist cairns”, that number came from Google. It is also, for a dentist in Cairns, about twice the size of the market it describes.
I pulled Google’s search volume two ways for three local trades this week: once the way the proposals do, across all of Australia, and once restricted to people physically in Cairns. Same terms, same source, same month. The gap had the same shape every time.
The numbers
“Plumber cairns”: 1,600 searches a month nationally. From people in Cairns, 880.
“Dentist cairns”: 2,400 nationally. From Cairns, 1,000.
“Electrician cairns”: 1,000 nationally. From Cairns, 480.
Between 45 and 58 per cent of the searches that include the town name are coming from outside it. Some of that is real demand from the Tablelands, Port Douglas and the coast, where people search for a Cairns tradie because that is where they will drive to. Some of it is people planning a move, property managers in Brisbane, tourists with a toothache, and people who are simply not here. The data cannot tell those apart. What it can tell you is that the headline figure is not “Cairns residents looking for a dentist”, however it is presented.
The searches the proposal leaves out
The second pull is the one I find more useful. Restricted to Cairns, the biggest searches are not the ones with the town in them.
For plumbers: “plumbers near me” at 260 a month and plain “plumber” at 210. For dentists: “dentist near me” at 590 and “dentist” at 320. For electricians: “electrician near me” and “electrician”, 170 each.
Add those up and locals searching without the town name are running at somewhere between half and nine tenths of the volume of those who type it. A dentist in Cairns has around 1,000 people a month asking Google for a dentist in Cairns, and another 900 or so asking for a dentist while standing in Cairns, never mentioning the place. Google knows where they are. It does not need the word.
Those searches are almost entirely served by the map pack. Which means a report showing you “position 1 for dentist cairns” is showing you one door, and the other door is the Google Business Profile most businesses set up once and never open again.
What I would do with this
Two things, and neither is complicated.
Treat any search volume figure in a proposal as a national number until someone shows you otherwise. Ask where the searchers are. If the answer is a blank look, the number has not been checked.
And weight the Business Profile at least as heavily as the website for anything with “near me” demand. The website wins the searches that name the town. A well-run Google Business Profile wins the ones that do not, and in Cairns that is somewhere between a third and half of the customers.
Two caveats on the data. Google rounds volume into buckets, so 880 means somewhere around 880, not a count. And “in Cairns” here means the city itself, so a plumber who serves Gordonvale or Kuranda has real customers on the wrong side of that line. Neither changes the shape of the finding. I ran three trades. If someone shows me a fourth where the gap disappears, I will add it here.