43 SEO Statistics for Trades Businesses in 2026, With Every Source Named

Most of the SEO statistics quoted at trades businesses are unsourced, out of date, or American figures presented as British ones. Below are 43 we could open and read on the source page, each one labelled UK or US. We run SEO and Google Ads for UK trades businesses at Slingshot Marketing, and these are the numbers we work from.

The headline SEO statistics for trades businesses in 2026

The UK trade industry is worth £138bn a year and employs around 900,000 tradespeople. Google handles roughly 3 billion UK searches a month and holds more than 90% of the market. About 30% of those searches now return an AI summary, and click-through rate at position one has fallen from 28% to 19% in a year.

• £138bn is the annual value of the UK trade industry, across around 900,000 tradespeople (Checkatrade, UK)

• More than 90% of UK searches go through Google (Competition and Markets Authority, UK)

• 82% of UK online adults used Google Search in a single month, across roughly 3 billion monthly searches (Ofcom, UK)

• 30% of UK Google searches now show an AI Overview, and 53% of adults say they see them often (Ofcom, UK)

• 77% of UK adult online time is spent on a smartphone (Ofcom, UK)

• Position one click-through rate fell from 28% to 19% year on year, a 32% decline (GrowthSRC, global)

• 32% of local pack ranking weight sits with Google Business Profile signals, and eight of the top ten individual factors come from the profile (Whitespark, US expert survey)

• 68% of consumers will only use a business rated four stars or higher, up from 55% the year before (BrightLocal, US)

• $90.92 is the average cost per lead for home services on Google Ads, rising to $228.15 for roofing (LocaliQ, US)

• 1.8 billion UK visits to ChatGPT in the first eight months of 2025, against 368 million in the same period the year before (Ofcom, UK)

Local search statistics for trades businesses

How much time UK adults spend online, what share of it goes through Google, and what happens after a local search. The UK figures here come from Ofcom. The behavioural conversion figures are older Google data and are labelled as such.

UK adults spend 4 hours 30 minutes online per day, up 10 minutes year on year

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025 (published 10 December 2025). UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

Built on the Ipsos iris passively tracked panel plus Ofcom's own adult media use survey, so it measures behaviour rather than asking people to estimate it. Four and a half hours a day is the window in which your business is either findable or invisible.

Google Search was used by 82% of online adults in the UK in a single month

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, May 2025 data. UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

This is monthly reach, not daily. More than four in five UK adults who go online touched Google in one month. For a local trades business it means one platform decides most of your discoverability, which simplifies where to put the effort.

Google handles around 3 billion web searches a month in the UK

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025. UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

Ofcom describes Google as the most used search service in the UK and notes it is rolling out AI Overviews. Scale matters less than share here, but three billion monthly searches is the pool that local queries come from.

Roughly 46% of all Google searches have local intent

Source: attributed to Google via HubSpot and SOCi roundups, tracing to Google statements around 2018. Global data. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats

Treat this as directional and dated. Google has never published a current version of the figure, and the number gets repeated without a year attached. It is included because it is quoted constantly, not because it is fresh.

"Near me" and "open now near me" searches grew by several hundred per cent across multiple years

Source: Think with Google, retail data 2019 to 2022. Global data.

These are real Google figures rather than invented ones, but they describe growth over a three-year window that ended some time ago. Use them as evidence that the behaviour exists, not as a current growth rate.

76% of people who search for something nearby on mobile visit a business within a day, and around 28% of local searches lead to a purchase

Source: Think with Google, circa 2018 to 2019. Global data.

Still the most cited primary figure on local search conversion. It explains why local search behaves differently to other channels: the searcher has a problem now, not a research project. State the year whenever you quote it.

ChatGPT recorded around 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in the same period the previous year

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025. UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

Roughly five times growth in twelve months. Visits are not searches for a tradesperson, so this measures adoption rather than intent. It is the best UK-specific evidence that a second discovery surface is forming.

Ranking, click-through rate and Google Business Profile statistics

What a top ranking is worth now compared to two years ago, and which signals the local pack rewards. The Whitespark figures are an expert opinion survey rather than measured data, which matters when you weigh them.

The number one organic result gets 27.6% of clicks on average

Source: Backlinko (Brian Dean), analysis of 4 million Google search results, 2022. Global data. https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats

Large-scale clickstream and Search Console analysis. It predates AI Overviews entirely, so read it as the pre-AI baseline rather than what position one earns today. The next figure is the update.

Position one organic click-through rate fell from 28% to 19% year on year, a 32% decline

Source: GrowthSRC, 2025 study of more than 200,000 keywords across 30 sites. Global data. https://growthsrc.com/google-organic-ctr-study/

Click-through rate across positions one to five fell about 18%, attributed to AI Overviews. Ranking has not stopped mattering. Each position simply returns fewer clicks than it did, which changes what a given ranking is worth in enquiries.

Google Business Profile signals carry the most weight in the local pack at 32%, ahead of review signals at 20% and on-page signals at 15%

Source: Whitespark, 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, released November 2025. US and global expert survey. https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/

Run by Darren Shaw, with 47 experts scoring 187 factors including a new AI search visibility category. On-page signals are weighted higher in organic results at 19% than they are in the local pack.

Eight of the top ten individual local pack ranking factors come directly from the Google Business Profile

Source: Whitespark, 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors. US and global expert survey. https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/

The profile is free and takes an afternoon to set up properly, which makes it the highest return work available to a local trades business. We have written up what moves a profile up the map pack, including the parts that do nothing.

A business being open at the time of the search is now the fifth most important individual factor for local pack visibility

Source: Whitespark, 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors. US and global expert survey. https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/

It entered the top five for the first time in 2026. If your hours say closed at 7pm and someone searches at 8pm, you are competing at a disadvantage you have set yourself. Holiday hours count too.

Review signals and behavioural signals rose in importance for 2026, while on-page and link signals slipped

Source: Whitespark, 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors. US and global expert survey. https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/

Behavioural signals means clicks, calls and direction requests on the profile. This positions reviews as a ranking lever rather than only a trust signal, and it is the one lever a trades business can keep pulling after setup is done.

Review and trust statistics

Every figure in this section samples US adults. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey does not survey UK consumers, so these read as directional guides for a British trades business rather than measurements of one.

97% of consumers read reviews before choosing a local business, and 41% always read them, up from 29% the year before

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US adults. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

The jump in "always" from 29% to 41% in twelve months is the movement worth watching. Reading reviews has shifted from something people do when unsure to something they do by default.

68% of consumers will only use a business with four or more stars, up from 55% the year before

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

A rating that passed last year may filter you out this year. A trades business sitting on 3.8 stars is not slightly behind a competitor on 4.2, it is below a threshold two thirds of people apply before they consider you.

Google's share as the top review platform fell from 83% to 71%, while use of AI tools such as ChatGPT for recommendations rose from 6% to 45%

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

Review visibility is fragmenting. Google is still the largest platform by a distance, but a growing share of people are asking an assistant rather than reading a listing, and the assistant pulls from whatever it can find.

The average consumer uses six different review sites

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

Six sites is an argument for consistency rather than for joining every platform going. A trades business showing four stars on Google and 4.8 on Checkatrade is giving two different answers to the same question.

Around 81% of consumers say they use online reviews as often as personal recommendations when choosing a local service

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2024/2025. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

Word of mouth and reviews are not competing channels for a trades business. A referral gets you onto the shortlist, then the review profile decides whether the referral survives the check that follows it.

Most consumers expect a local business to have between 20 and 99 reviews, and that expectation has not moved since 2023

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2024. US data. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

59% named that range. It is a usable target: 20 reviews is the floor where a profile stops looking new, and past about 100 the returns on volume flatten compared with recency and rating.

Google Ads cost statistics for trades and home services

Paid search benchmarks are worth knowing even if you only run organic, because they price the alternative. Every figure here is American and in dollars. UK costs differ, but the relative ordering between trades tends to hold.

Home services average cost per click on Google Ads was $7.85 in 2025

Source: LocaliQ, 2025 Home Services Search Ad Benchmarks, 3,211 US campaigns, April 2024 to March 2025. US data. https://localiq.com/blog/home-services-search-advertising-benchmarks/

Conversion rate declined for 10 of the 16 subcategories year on year, and cost per lead rose for 69% of home services advertisers by an average of 10.51%. Paid search in this sector got more expensive and converted slightly worse.

Average cost per lead for home services in 2025 was $90.92, ranging from $45.15 to $228.15 depending on trade

Source: LocaliQ, 2025 Home Services Search Ad Benchmarks. US data. https://localiq.com/blog/home-services-search-advertising-benchmarks/

The clearest trade-by-trade breakdown available, running from cheapest to most expensive:

• Pools and spas, $45.15

• Cleaning, $46.99

• Handyman, $54.05

• Plumbing, $76.40

• HVAC, $84.92

• Construction and contractors, $165.67

• Doors and windows, $200.34

• Roofing and gutters, $228.15

The spread is the point. A £150 lead is expensive for a handyman and cheap for a roofer, and the only way to tell which you are looking at is to divide it into your average job value. Our SEO ROI calculator runs the same sum for organic.

The highest cost-per-click trades were painting at $13.74, electricians at $12.18 and roofing and gutters at $10.70

Source: LocaliQ, 2025 Home Services Search Ad Benchmarks. US data. https://localiq.com/blog/home-services-search-advertising-benchmarks/

Cost per click and cost per lead do not rank the same trades in the same order. Electricians are second most expensive per click but mid-table per lead, because the click converts more often once it lands.

Home and home improvement has one of the highest search conversion rates of any industry at about 10.22%

Source: WordStream, 2025 Google Ads Benchmarks. US and global data. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2025-google-ads-benchmarks

Roughly one in ten clicks becomes an enquiry, against low single figures in most sectors. High intent is the reason. Somebody searching for a roofer has a leak, not an interest in roofing.

Cross-industry average cost per lead rose from $66.69 in 2024 to $70.11 in 2025

Source: WordStream, 2025 Google Ads Benchmarks, 16,000 US campaigns. US data. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2025-google-ads-benchmarks

Home and home improvement sits well above that cross-industry average on cost per click, at around $7.85. Trades pay more per click than most sectors and convert better than most sectors, roughly cancelling out.

Google Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click, at a national average of roughly $60 per lead against $90.92 for standard search ads

Source: LocaliQ and SearchLight Digital, 2025 to 2026. US data.

Local Services Ads carry the Google Guaranteed badge and sit above normal ads on many trade searches in the UK as well. The pricing model differs from standard search: you pay for a lead, not for a click that may go nowhere.

Mobile and AI search statistics

The freshest and fastest moving numbers on this page. The single UK figure from Ofcom is the strongest evidence available on how far AI answers have reached British search results.

About 30% of Google searches in the UK now show AI Overviews, and 53% of UK adults say they see these summaries often

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025. UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

Ofcom notes that in most cases people are not seeking these summaries, they are finding them included by default. This is the strongest UK-specific AI search figure published, and it is roughly double the US measurements below.

AI Overviews appeared for 13.14% of queries in March 2025, peaked near 25% in July, and settled around 16% by November

Source: Semrush AI Overviews Study, 10 million keywords, US desktop, with Datos clickstream data. US data. https://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-ai-overviews-study/

Up from 6.49% in January 2025, so the share roughly doubled inside three months before stabilising. 88.1% of AI Overview queries are informational, which is why blog content is more exposed to this than service pages.

Organic click-through rate for queries with an AI Overview dropped about 61% between mid-2024 and September 2025

Source: Seer Interactive, analysis of more than 25 million impressions, published November 2025. US data.

This quantifies the traffic cost rather than the visibility cost. The page can still rank first and lose most of its clicks, because the answer has been given above it before anyone scrolls.

When an AI Overview is present, only about 1% of users click a link inside the Overview

Source: Pew Research Center, July 2025. US data.

Pew also found users click a traditional result 8% of the time when an Overview is shown, against 15% when one is not. A credible non-vendor source, which is rare on this subject.

Around 93% of searches in Google's AI Mode end without a click to any website

Source: Semrush, September 2025, 69 million US desktop sessions. US data.

AI Mode is a separate product from AI Overviews and currently carries far less volume. The figure matters as a direction of travel rather than a present-day problem for a trades business.

Google holds more than 90% of the UK search market

Source: Competition and Markets Authority, Strategic Market Status designation, 10 October 2025, corroborated by StatCounter Global Stats. UK data. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/united-kingdom

The CMA cited more than 90% of UK searches when it designated Google with Strategic Market Status. For a UK trades business, search visibility and Google visibility remain effectively the same thing.

77% of UK adult online time is spent on smartphones

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025. UK data. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/online-nation

Three quarters of the time your customer spends online happens on a screen the size of a hand. A trade website that has been designed on a desktop and checked on a phone afterwards has the priority the wrong way round.

UK trades market and digital adoption statistics

The market context: how large the sector is, how it is trading, and how many trades businesses have a website at all. These are the strongest UK primary sources on this page.

The UK trade industry is worth £138bn to the economy each year and comprises around 900,000 tradespeople

Source: Checkatrade, Trade Nation report 2025, survey of 850 UK trade workers. UK data. https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/news/trade-nation-report/

Quoted by chief executive Jambu Palaniappan. Treat it as an industry characterisation rather than a national statistic, because Checkatrade does not publish the method behind the headline figure.

72% of tradespeople are confident about their future, against 7% who feel pessimistic

Source: Checkatrade, Trade Nation 2025. UK data. https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/news/trade-nation-report/

The same survey found 71% say skills shortages are stopping them expanding and 79% say rising material and tool costs are holding back growth. Confidence is high, capacity is the constraint.

The UK needs 1.3 million new skilled tradespeople and 350,000 apprentices over the next decade

Source: Checkatrade, UK Trade Skills Index 2024, produced with Capital Economics. UK data. https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/news/checkatrade-publishes-annual-uk-trade-skills-index-2024/

The same modelling forecasts the home improvement and repair sector growing 40% over ten years. This is macroeconomic modelling rather than a survey, and it depends on housebuilding and net zero targets being met.

Checkatrade reports over 6.2 million verified reviews and more than 50,000 vetted trade businesses on its platform

Source: Checkatrade, 2025 company-reported figures. UK data. https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/expert-advice/checkatrade-how-we-work/

Company-reported and unaudited, so quote it as "Checkatrade reports" rather than as a fact. It is useful for sizing the directory market, which is the main alternative a trades business weighs against its own search visibility.

There were 370,770 VAT or PAYE registered construction firms operating in Great Britain in 2024

Source: ONS, Construction Statistics, Great Britain 2024. UK data. https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/constructionindustry/articles/constructionstatistics/2024

ONS counts only businesses registered for VAT or PAYE, which excludes sole traders below the VAT threshold. That is why this figure sits well below the 900,000 tradespeople above. The two are counting different things.

Construction made up 15.8% of all UK businesses in 2025, the largest single sector

Source: ONS Business Demography and House of Commons Library business statistics briefing, 2025. UK data. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/SN06152/

Roughly one in six UK businesses is a construction business. That is the competitive density any local trades business is operating inside, and it is the reason local search terms are contested even in small towns.

Net workloads rose 25%, enquiries 34% and employment 26% among UK builders in the first half of 2025, the strongest since Q1 2010

Source: Federation of Master Builders and Chartered Institute of Building, State of Trade Survey H1 2025, 458 firms. UK data. https://www.fmb.org.uk/resource/state-of-trade-survey-h1-2025.html

These are net balances, meaning the share reporting an increase minus the share reporting a decrease. 61% of firms were affected by skills shortages. H2 2025, published in early 2026, showed slower but still positive growth: workloads 22%, employment 17%, enquiries 18%.

Around 68% of all UK businesses have a website, including 65% of sole traders and 74% of micro businesses

Source: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Business Data Survey 2024, 3,911 businesses, fieldwork October 2023 to February 2024. UK data. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-business-data-survey-2024/uk-business-data-survey-2024

This is the defensible modern proxy for website adoption among trades, because most tradespeople are sole traders or micro businesses. It replaces the widely quoted "28% of tradespeople have a website", which is a decade old.

47% of tradespeople say a social media presence helps them get more work, but 85% say they do not know how to use it effectively

Source: IronmongeryDirect, research by The Leadership Factor, 2020. UK data. https://www.insightdiy.co.uk/news/ironmongerydirect-gives-social-media-advice-to-the-trade/9284.htm

Six years old, so label the year whenever you quote it. The gap between believing something works and knowing how to do it is the most useful part of the finding, and it has not obviously narrowed.

UK consumers spend an average of £3,403 a year on general property upkeep

Source: Checkatrade Home Improvement research, 2025. UK data. https://wed-mag.co.uk/checkatrades-latest-research-and-ai-tool-signals-surge-in-job-opportunities-for-trades/

Demand-side context for recurring work rather than one-off projects. It is the reason a trades business that captures a customer once through search often captures several jobs from them over the following years.

Rated People's home improvement research covers more than one million home improvement jobs posted annually

Source: Rated People, Home Improvement Trends Report. UK data. https://www.ratedpeople.com/blog/home-improvement-trends-report

A solid UK demand-trend source built on real job postings rather than a consumer survey. The latest confirmed full edition is 2023, so check the current year before quoting any specific figure from it.

How to read these numbers

Three things separate a figure you can build a decision on from a figure that has been passed between blogs until nobody knows where it started.

Check the country. BrightLocal surveys US adults. LocaliQ and WordStream report US ad campaigns in dollars. Whitespark surveys mostly North American practitioners. UK local search behaves similarly, but review thresholds and AI adoption rates should not be transplanted without saying so.

Check whether it was measured or asked. Ofcom's Online Nation figures come from passive tracking of real behaviour. Whitespark's ranking factor weights come from 47 experts scoring a list. Both are useful. Only one of them is an observation.

Check the year, and check it again on anything about AI. A 2022 click-through rate benchmark describes a search results page that no longer exists. The AI Overview figures on this page moved by a factor of four inside twelve months, and they will have moved again by the time you read this.

Sample sizes here are small by national standards: 458 firms for the FMB, 850 workers for Checkatrade's Trade Nation survey, 1,002 adults for BrightLocal. Any breakdown by individual trade off those bases carries a wide margin of error.

Trades SEO statistics you should stop citing

Five numbers circulate constantly in trades marketing content and none of them survive a check on the source. We have kept them off the list above rather than repeating them with a caveat.

• "75% of users never scroll past the first page of Google." There is no traceable living primary source. It has been quoted for over a decade with no origin anyone can produce.

• "28% of tradespeople have a website." IronmongeryDirect, circa 2015. The DSIT UK Business Data Survey 2024 figures above are the modern replacement.

• "73% of UK homeowners search online before hiring tradespeople." This appears only on agency marketing blogs. We could not find a primary study behind it.

• "46% of Google searches have local intent." Real but dated, tracing back to Google statements around 2018 and possibly earlier. Directional only, and always state the year.

• BrightLocal figures presented as UK data. The Local Consumer Review Survey samples US adults. It is quoted as British consumer behaviour more often than not.

The pattern behind all five is the same. A figure gets published with a source, the next site quotes it without one, and after four or five hops the number is circulating with no year, no country and no method attached to it. If you are going to build a marketing decision on a statistic, open the source page first.