Builder searches in Australia

Builder keywords, by job

People in marketing call these searches keywords. Keywords are just the words people type into Google, so from here we say searches. About 1,261,580 searches a month name the job, 78% of the whole count, because a person looking for a builder mostly types what they want built: a new home or a custom home is the biggest group, then bathroom renovations, granny flats, kitchen renovations, whole-house renovations, extensions and second storeys, decks and pergolas, and sheds. The renovation groups together come to 540,430 a month, about 33% of the count. Every group below is the total of all the searches that name that job, with the biggest single search beside it.

Where the searches are

68% of all the searches name a place. The capital cities come first, then the regional cities, then the suburbs, 956 of them with a measurable search. Every place name was matched against the Bureau of Statistics list of Australian suburbs and localities, so "bathroom renovations penrith" counts for Penrith and nowhere else. Every figure in this section counts every search that names the place, whichever group it sits in; the share bar at the top puts a search that also says emergency or names a job in that group first, which is why its place figures read lower.

By state, counting every search that names a place: New South Wales 288,860 · Victoria 244,890 · Queensland 209,420 · Western Australia 156,480 · South Australia 55,350 · Australian Capital Territory 22,320 · Tasmania 12,890 · Northern Territory 4,630 · Other Territories 50. A further 90,440 sit on suburb names shared by more than one state, 9,390 only say Australia and 4,560 sit on place names with no state. Suburb searches together come to 230,560 a month, across 3,067 different searches.

"Near me" and emergency searches

"Builders near me" is the biggest search that says "near me", and the searches that say "near me" or "local" come to 63,760 a month together, about 4% of the total. Half of those name a job as well ("bathroom renovations near me", "shed builders near me"). The emergency, after hours and 24 hour searches come to 190 a month across ten searches, none of them measured above 40, too small to chart, so there is no emergency chart on this page. Both are far smaller than the place searches: most people type the job and where they are, not "near me".

The biggest "near me" searches

Semrush lists the same words in a different order as separate searches: "melbourne builders" (1,300) beside "builders melbourne", "perth home builders" (1,300) beside "home builders perth", "adelaide builders" (1,000) beside "builders adelaide". They are the same words. The chart shows them as Semrush lists them; across the whole count, 150,450 a month sits on a search whose words also appear, in another order, in a bigger one, which is why the key band gives both figures, 1,622,640 as listed and 1,472,190 counted once.

The dearest clicks on the page sit on the commercial work: Semrush's estimate for one click on "office renovation" is $21.09, against an average of $5.06 for a suburb search and $4.13 across the job group. Getting your Google listing into the three at the top for the "near me" searches, and getting your website found for the job searches, is SEO for builders (SEO means getting your business found on Google), and that page covers both halves.

What a click costs

If you run Google ads, you pay each time someone clicks your ad, and the price is set by an auction, so it is a range, not a number. Google's own planning tool records what advertisers have bid for the top ad spot. We published that range for one builder search, "builder near me", on 21 July 2026 and it is repeated here word for word; no other builder search has a published range yet.

builder near meA$5.30 to A$19.25

The search counts on this page come from Semrush and the click ranges come from Google, and the two are never mixed in one figure. Google's planning tool also counts searches, and it groups close spellings, so it puts "builder near me" at 6,600 a month where Semrush lists 1,900 (the Google Keyword Planner figure is on our Google Ads cost per click page, retrieved 21 July 2026); this page uses Semrush for every count so that every figure comes from one export, and Google only for what a click costs. Semrush's own click estimates for the job groups are in the jobs table above. Where you land inside a range is set by your bid and your ad quality; how that works is on Google Ads for tradies, and the full table of 44 searches across 15 trades is on Google Ads cost per click by trade.

How we counted

Every search count on this page comes from Semrush, a paid tool that estimates how many times a search is typed into Google in Australia each month, averaged over the past twelve months. On 8 September 2026 we exported every search Semrush lists that contains "builder" or "builders", "renovation" in any of its forms, "extension" or "granny flat": 93,992 different searches, 5,910,810 a month between them. Renovations, extensions and granny flats are in the pull on purpose: a renovation is a builder's job, and someone typing "bathroom renovations melbourne" is looking for the same builder as someone typing "builders melbourne". The exports are kept and dated.

Then we took out everything that is not a person looking to hire a builder: 3,555,370 a month across 52,141 searches, listed by reason below. Every one of the four words is also something else. "Builder" is a website builder, a resume builder and a PC builder, a nail product, a job title, a video game and Bob the Builder; "extension" is a browser extension, hair and eyelash extensions, an extension cord and a contract extension; "renovation" is a television show, a loan and a DIY weekend. The biggest pile is those other subjects (2,107,510 a month), then questions and research, the bare words "granny flat" and "renovation" among them (371,050), things sold to the trade such as website builders and insurance (264,710), building supplies and the discount warehouses (242,060), careers, licence checks and the Master Builders bodies (238,940), and the games, pubs and cartoons (170,000).

Three more sets are shown but never counted. Searches about cost, price or a quote, 73,800 a month across 1,101 searches, because that was the rule we set before we started; for a builder that set is worth looking at, because "bathroom renovation cost", "kitchen renovation cost" and "granny flat cost" are big searches in their own right. Building businesses searched by name, 211,760 a month, because someone typing a business name has already picked their builder: that is every search Semrush tags as a brand lookup, plus the name-shaped ones it does not tag as a hire ("{word} homes", "{word} constructions", "{business} reviews"). And the searches Semrush lists but has never measured (no difficulty score, no click cost, no intent), 447,240 a month across 22,148 rows, most of them a suburb or a business name at 10 or 20 a month, because a number nobody has measured is a guess.

Everything left is the count: 1,622,640 a month from 15,878 searches. Each one sits in exactly one group, by this order: emergency first, then the job, then the place, then "near me", then company or services, then best or cheap, then the bare word. So "bathroom renovations sydney" is a job search, "builders sunbury" a suburb search, and "builders near me" a near-me search. The key band and the "near me" total above count every search that says those words, whichever group it sits in.

Three limits, stated plainly. Semrush caps an export at 10,000 rows, and the words "builder" and "extension" run to 84,000 and 158,000 rows at 10 and 20 searches a month, nearly all of them never measured, so for those bands we exported only the rows that carry a click cost (the rows the count can use, about 9,300 of the 84,000 and 10,300 of the 158,000); every export matched Semrush's own row count, so nothing ran past the cap. Broad match on "builder" also returns "builders" and "home builder", so those seeds were counted and not exported twice. And a search like "brighton renovations" could be someone in Brighton or a business named after it; we count it as the suburb, because that is what the words say.

KINGTRADIE is a tradie marketing company. We build websites, get businesses found on Google and run Google ads for Australian trade businesses, builders among them, and numbers like these are where we start when we plan a client's pages. The plan for a builder is laid out on SEO for builders. If a figure looks off, tell us and we will check it.