TOP PEST KEYWORD SEARCHES 2019

Do you know the number one pest keyword search in Australia? We’ve pulled national and state data from Google Keyword planner to see the number of searches for the 19 most common pests.

And the number one pest search across Australia is…?

Spiders … with bed bugs a close second!

One way to see what the top pests are in an area is to look at the number of online searches for that particular pest – cockroaches, ants, termites, etc. Admittedly, pest keywords are a very general and not necessarily commercial search term, but it does provide a general weighting as to the relative importance of the various pests.

We’ve pulled the data from Google Keyword Planner to give you the ranking of the key pests in Australia, but also for individual states and territory (Table 1).

Table 1: Top pest keyword searches ranked from most to least searched (Google Keyword Planner, March 2019)

PEST Average monthly searches (Australia) Australia NSW QLD VIC WA SA TAS ACT NT
spider 27100 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
bed bug 22200 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
cockroach 14800 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 3
mosquito 12100 4 4 4 4 5 3 3 4 4
silverfish 9900 5 5 4 6 5 3 4 4 7
wasp 9900 5 5 7 4 3 6 4 3 7
termites 6600 7 7 6 8 7 7 14 7 5
ants 5400 8 9 8 9 7 7 7 10 5
rats 5400 8 11 11 6 11 10 7 14 11
ticks 5400 8 8 8 12 7 12 12 8 12
mice 4400 11 11 11 9 11 10 12 10 7
millipede 4400 11 11 10 9 7 7 7 10 12
slaters 4400 11 9 11 14 11 17 7 8 15
fleas 3600 14 14 14 14 14 12 7 17 15
rodent 3600 14 14 14 12 16 15 14 14 12
flies 2900 16 16 16 17 14 12 14 17 7
pantry moths 2900 16 16 17 17 16 17 18 14 18
carpet beetle 2400 18 18 18 14 16 15 17 10 15
clothes moths 590 19 19 19 19 19 19 18 19 18

The top five pest searches in Australia are for spiders, bed bugs, cockroaches, mosquitoes and silverfish. Probably bed bugs at number two and silverfish at number five will be a surprise for some? Maybe more so that wasps, termites and ants and positions six, seven and eight.

The number of searches will vary by month and by state. For example, wasps get more searches in Tasmania, Victoria, WA and the ACT, at least partially driven by the presence of European wasps in these states.

Not surprisingly termites get relatively more searches in QLD and NT – the areas of higher termite pressure.

If you’re not already using it, if you’re doing your own SEO work and online advertising, it’s certainly worth getting to know the Google Keyword Planner.

Phil Ridley, Director, Bug Doctor Media

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