THE SEARCH LEDGER · CHICAGO EDITION · SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2026
Every month, Chicago types 10,865,200 searches looking for a local business, and advertisers pay $27.07M chasing them. Somebody gets found. Somebody doesn't. This is the weekly ledger of who, at what price, and what's still up for grabs — refreshed every Friday.
Chicago searches 39,467,160 times a month in total. The other 28,601,960 go to brands and places — the airport, the hospitals, the universities — which no local business can win. Those 8321 brands are tracked separately.
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Before anyone wins a customer, the customer has to ask. Here is what Chicago asked Google for last month.
searches a month across the 9490 keyword families where a local business can actually be chosen. That's roughly 362,000 people a day looking for something — or someone — in Chicago, with nobody in mind yet.
Each square is 1% of monthly search volume.
THE IMBALANCE
Food & Dining is 41% of the demand but only 45% of the tracked listings. A food & dining business here gets 55 searches per tracked competitor. Shopping gets about 55.
| Food & Dining | ~55 |
| Attractions | ~55 |
| Travel & Transit | ~55 |
| Hotels & Lodging | ~55 |
| Shopping | ~55 |
Search interest by month, 0–100 per vertical. The pink outline marks each vertical's peak — the month the phones ring.
| VERTICAL | JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Education | 84 | 70 | 82 | 83 | 69 | 54 | 63 | 84 | 100 | 98 | 81 | 58 |
| Attractions | 63 | 57 | 77 | 71 | 75 | 85 | 100 | 89 | 71 | 76 | 73 | 74 |
| Hotels & Lodging | 54 | 53 | 70 | 75 | 92 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 80 | 88 | 72 | 77 |
| Entertainment | 45 | 17 | 21 | 31 | 70 | 81 | 54 | 62 | 100 | 50 | 69 | 37 |
| Food & Dining | 71 | 65 | 73 | 70 | 81 | 81 | 98 | 100 | 86 | 92 | 78 | 86 |
| Home Services | 26 | 27 | 36 | 39 | 56 | 59 | 88 | 100 | 80 | 57 | 40 | 34 |
| Personal Care | 60 | 61 | 71 | 65 | 78 | 81 | 100 | 100 | 75 | 73 | 65 | 64 |
| News & Media | 78 | 63 | 84 | 63 | 51 | 57 | 74 | 91 | 100 | 94 | 91 | 85 |
| Shopping | 66 | 59 | 68 | 61 | 67 | 69 | 90 | 89 | 78 | 71 | 82 | 100 |
| Travel & Transit | 65 | 60 | 80 | 74 | 85 | 100 | 87 | 84 | 75 | 83 | 82 | 73 |
| Real Estate | 88 | 81 | 84 | 87 | 78 | 73 | 96 | 93 | 100 | 97 | 87 | 81 |
| Health & Wellness | 92 | 83 | 87 | 83 | 83 | 90 | 100 | 95 | 99 | 97 | 83 | 82 |
| Legal | 48 | 59 | 63 | 28 | 25 | 32 | 49 | 41 | 100 | 67 | 22 | 33 |
| Professional Services | 94 | 85 | 100 | 76 | 51 | 42 | 57 | 57 | 93 | 62 | 49 | 51 |
Breakout searches, recent weeks.
Attention in this city has a spot price, and Google publishes it: the cost per ad click. Here's what a customer's attention trades for in Chicago.
"BEST ACCIDENT ATTORNEY IN CHICAGO" · COST OF ONE AD CLICK
One click. Not a customer — a click. That's what a single visit from this search trades for in Chicago right now.
All 15564 tracked keywords by cost per click, log scale. Amber gets deeper as the click gets pricier.
Every tracked keyword, priced. These are live market rates — the same numbers we manage against daily as a Google Ads Partner.
bar length = CPC, linear scale · amber deepens with price · ad value = searches × CPC · Δ FRI = change since last Friday's pull
Half the people who click leave in seconds. The businesses bidding know that — and keep bidding. Here's the math that makes a $387 click rational, using legal industry benchmarks.
Call and close rates are vertical benchmarks, not promises. But the principle sets every price on the board: a click costs what the customer behind it is worth. Bounce rate is priced in.
ONE CUSTOMER FUNDS
How many clicks a single customer's revenue buys back, at that keyword's CPC. Customer values are industry benchmarks.
Same market, different economies. This is why "is $X a click expensive?" has no answer without knowing what a customer is worth to you.
Monthly ad-equivalent value of all clicks in each vertical — what you'd pay Google to buy the demand you could rank for.
Ranking organically doesn't pay that bill — it makes it someone else's.
High demand and open gaps put Chicago near the top of the markets we track. Translation: the door is open — and the rent on staying outside keeps going up.
A market this valuable doesn't sit unclaimed. Here's who holds Chicago's front page, who's climbing, who's slipping — and where the seats are still empty.
of Chicago's tracked page-one results belong to national directories — en.wikipedia.org, www.instagram.com, www.facebook.com — companies with no Chicago address. Their share is large. It is also beatable: Google prefers a good local answer when one exists.
Who currently leads the top 6 fights worth having. Leader = top organic result; OPEN RACE = no map pack on the page.
OPEN SEATS
4 of the 12 keywords we track on page one show no map pack at all. An open seat is an invitation. Claim your business profile before someone else RSVPs.
Share of 12 tracked keywords showing each SERP feature.
People Also Ask boxes show on 83% of these searches — answer those questions and you're on page one twice.
Of 1200 tracked businesses, 99% are independents — this is a local-owner's market.
ANATOMY OF A #1
Air Flows Chicago - Belmont
Top-rated of 96 tracked Hvac
None of this is magic. It's 13.8× the category's median review count. The playbook is public.
Of the 1,200 businesses we track in Chicago's map results, 111 have no website at all — 9% of the field, showing up on reputation alone.
BUSINESSES RANKING WITHOUT A SITE
The most-reviewed of them has 1,385 reviews and a 4.7 rating. If they are beating you, it is not because of their website.
Search demand doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from people, their paychecks, their rents, and their broadband. The economics underneath explain the market above.
Broadband speed runs 27% above the national benchmark in this market's favor; sales tax runs 47% above against it. Both sides of that ledger shape what customers here search for — and what winning them costs.
Each metric vs. the U.S. benchmark. ● right of the line = above national; direction of "good" is labeled per row.
center line = national benchmark · pink dot = favorable for operating a business here, hollow = unfavorable
Composite of 1 operating-cost factors vs. national benchmarks — costs here run above the national average across the board.
Everything else we track about living and working here — one line each, open what you need.
Air quality tracked from EPA monitors.
1 institutions and 17,384 enrolled students, led by University of Chicago. A permanent annual influx of new residents who choose dentists, gyms, and mechanics from a Google search.
3 tracked markets, including Chicago Cultural Center Green Market (Sat 8am-1pm). Weekend-morning spikes for "farmers market near me" are among the most predictable recurring search patterns there are.
15 coworking spaces tracked — a low-density remote-work market. A remote-work population searches like a resident but spends like a visitor: lunch, gyms, services near the clusters.
Average download of 212 Mbps, 95.4% coverage, 61.2% fiber availability. Fast connections mean impatient visitors: page speed is a ranking and conversion factor here.
In the news: "Local startup secures major funding round - Chicago" (Chicago Local News). Event weekends measurably lift "restaurants near" and "parking" searches around the venues.
The 8321 brands, institutions and landmarks this metro looks up by name — 28,601,960 searches a month. No local business can win these. They are what the city is.
| 1 | chicago bears | 1.22M | |
| 2 | bears chicago bears | 1.22M | |
| 3 | chicago bears chicago bears | 1.22M | |
| 4 | chicago cubs | 1.00M | |
| 5 | cubs game today | 450K | |
| 6 | chicago cubs game today | 450K | |
| 7 | chicago cubs tickets | 368K | |
| 8 | cubs game | 368K | |
| 9 | chicago cubs game | 368K | |
| 10 | cubs baseball game | 368K |
5 numbers, one conclusion: the demand is real, the price of ignoring it compounds, and the leaderboard is not settled. The only question the ledger can't answer is whether you're on it.
STEP 1 · TWO MINUTES
Run the free 47-point audit against your site. Five issues free, all 47 after signup. No credit card.
Scan your site freeSTEP 2 · IF YOU'RE ON THE MAP
4 contested keywords have no map pack at all. If your business profile is unclaimed, you're forfeiting by default.
Claim your businessSTEP 3 · EVERY FRIDAY
The ledger reprints Friday 6am — movers, price changes, and open seats, in your inbox before your competitors read it.
GO DEEPER · THE LEDGER BY VERTICAL