Plumber searches in Australia

Plumber 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 249,140 searches a month name the job, and the jobs sort out the way a plumber's phone does: gas, blocked drains, roof plumbing and commercial maintenance are the big four, then hot water, toilets, kitchens and bathrooms. 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

76% of all the searches name a place. The capital cities come first, then the regional cities, then the suburbs, 2,764 of them with a measurable search. Every place name was matched against the Bureau of Statistics list of Australian suburbs and localities, so "plumber penrith" counts for Penrith and nowhere else.

By state, counting every search that names a place: New South Wales 313,170 · Queensland 238,220 · Victoria 178,340 · Western Australia 157,990 · South Australia 89,040 · Australian Capital Territory 19,330 · Tasmania 8,230 · Northern Territory 3,890 · Other Territories 20. A further 211,550 sit on suburb names shared by more than one state, 1,790 only say Australia and 4,830 sit on place names with no state. Suburb searches together come to 737,710 a month, across 7,685 different searches.

"Near me" and emergency searches

"Plumber near me" is the single biggest search in the country, and the searches that say "near me" or "local" come to 134,860 a month together, about 8% of the total. The emergency, after hours and 24 hour searches come to 164,540 a month, about 10%. Both are smaller than the place searches: most people type where they are, not "near me".

The biggest "near me" searches

Semrush lists the same words in a different order as separate searches: "near me plumber" (8,100) beside "plumber near me", "sydney plumber" (1,300) beside "plumber sydney", "melbourne plumber" (1,000) beside "plumber melbourne". They are the same words. The chart shows them as Semrush lists them; across the whole count, 143,830 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, 1,620,370 as listed and 1,476,540 counted once.

The biggest emergency searches

The emergency group carries the dearest clicks on the page: an average Semrush click estimate of $24.52 against $19.72 for a suburb search. Getting your Google listing into the three at the top for the emergency searches is the job of local SEO for plumbers, and getting your website found for the job searches is SEO for plumbers (SEO means getting your business found on Google).

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 those ranges for six plumber searches on 21 July 2026 and they are repeated here word for word.

plumber near meA$11.30 to A$53.95

emergency plumberA$13.09 to A$68.92

24 hour plumberA$13.53 to A$65.02

plumber sydneyA$7.18 to A$38.47

plumber melbourneA$9.04 to A$50.49

plumber brisbaneA$11.66 to A$65.64

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 "plumber near me" at 49,500 a month where Semrush lists 22,200 (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. 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 "plumber", "plumbers" or "plumbing": 97,616 different searches, 3,948,310 a month between them. The exports are kept and dated.

Then we took out everything that is not a person looking to hire a plumber: 1,129,340 a month across 29,933 searches, listed by reason below. The biggest chunks are plumbing supplies and tools, plumbing careers, wages and courses, questions about the trade, and things sold to plumbers such as insurance and software.

Three more sets are shown but never counted. Searches about cost, price or a quote, 12,560 a month, because that was the rule we set before we started. Plumbing businesses searched by name, 454,050 a month, because someone typing a business name has already picked their plumber: that is every search Semrush tags as a brand lookup, plus the name-shaped ones it does not tag as a hire ("{word} plumbing", "{city} plumbing and {service}", "{business} reviews"). And the searches Semrush lists but has never measured (no difficulty score, no click cost, no intent), 731,990 a month across 42,739 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: 1,620,370 a month from 15,822 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 "emergency plumber sydney" is an emergency search, "gas plumber melbourne" a job search, and "plumber penrith" a suburb search. The key band and the "near me" and emergency totals above count every search that says those words, whichever group it sits in.

Two limits, stated plainly. Semrush caps an export at 10,000 rows, so the searches at 20 a month for "plumbing" were exported in word-count slices and two of those slices ran past the cap; the rows we could not export are all unmeasured and were never going to be counted. And a search like "parkwood plumbing" could be someone in Parkwood 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, plumbers among them, and numbers like these are where we start when we plan a client's pages. The plan for a plumber is laid out on marketing for plumbers. If a figure looks off, tell us and we will check it.