THE SEARCH LEDGER · RALEIGH-DURHAM EDITION · MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2026
Every month, Raleigh-Durham types 102,700 searches for local goods and services into Google. 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.
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Before anyone wins a customer, the customer has to ask. Here is what Raleigh-Durham asked Google for last month.
searches across the 35 local keyword families we track. That's roughly 3,000 people a day looking for something — or someone — in Raleigh-Durham.
Each square is 1% of monthly search volume.
THE IMBALANCE
Food & Dining is 15% of the demand but only 1% of the tracked listings. A food & dining business here gets 2,157 searches per tracked competitor. Home Services gets about 55.
| Food & Dining | 2,157 |
| Hotels & Lodging | 1,860 |
| Attractions | ~55 |
| Education | ~55 |
| Home Services | ~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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attractions | 42 | 45 | 62 | 78 | 88 | 92 | 90 | 84 | 70 | 68 | 50 | 46 |
| Food & Dining | 48 | 50 | 58 | 64 | 72 | 74 | 70 | 68 | 62 | 60 | 66 | 82 |
| Hotels & Lodging | 38 | 40 | 52 | 60 | 74 | 88 | 92 | 86 | 78 | 82 | 60 | 55 |
| Real Estate | 45 | 55 | 72 | 88 | 94 | 90 | 78 | 68 | 58 | 50 | 42 | 38 |
| Education | 72 | 60 | 48 | 42 | 88 | 46 | 40 | 96 | 62 | 50 | 44 | 40 |
| Home Services | 58 | 52 | 60 | 68 | 78 | 94 | 96 | 90 | 66 | 54 | 62 | 70 |
| Health & Wellness | 90 | 78 | 62 | 55 | 50 | 48 | 46 | 50 | 68 | 60 | 54 | 58 |
| Travel & Transit | 50 | 46 | 55 | 62 | 74 | 92 | 96 | 88 | 65 | 58 | 78 | 84 |
Breakout searches, recent weeks.
NOBODY HAS ANSWERED THESE
Questions Raleigh-Durham asks Google that no local business has a page for. Free content calendar — first credible answer usually wins the snippet.
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 Raleigh-Durham.
"RALEIGH PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER" · COST OF ONE AD CLICK
One click. Not a customer — a click. That's what a single visit from this search trades for in Raleigh-Durham right now.
All 35 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 $23 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.
Average cost per click across 5 money keywords, trailing 12 months.
The price of a customer's click rose 9% over 12 months. Ads rent attention at a rate that keeps moving. Rankings compound.
A real market with real competition: the demand in Raleigh-Durham is there, and the gaps that remain reward businesses that move before the rest of the page does.
A market this valuable doesn't sit unclaimed. Here's who holds Raleigh-Durham's front page, who's climbing, who's slipping — and where the seats are still empty.
of Raleigh-Durham's tracked page-one results belong to national directories — tripadvisor.com, yelp.com, timeout.com — companies with no Raleigh-Durham 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
2 of the 8 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 8 tracked keywords showing each SERP feature.
The map pack appears on 75% of these searches — for most local queries, the map is page one.
Of 19 tracked businesses, 74% are independents — this is a local-owner's market.
ANATOMY OF A #1
Carolina Inn
Top-rated of 5 tracked Hotels
None of this is magic. It's a rating edge and steady reviews. The playbook is public.
Search demand doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from 475,691 people, their paychecks, their rents, and their broadband. The economics underneath explain the market above.
Broadband speed runs 154% above the national benchmark in this market's favor; avg. local cpc runs 23% 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 4 operating-cost factors vs. national benchmarks — electricity runs below the national average here.
Median age 34.2. Every one of them picks businesses from a search box — Chapter 1's demand is this population talking.
Homes here move in 28 days. Housing churn is a lead engine: every mover re-picks nearly every local service on this page.
Anchored by Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State University — payrolls that keep local spending steady.
Everything else we track about living and working here — one line each, open what you need.
Partly Cloudy, 62°F - A pleasant spring day in Raleigh-Durham. Winds from the southwest at 8 mph. Seasonal swings in the weather show up directly in the demand calendar back in Chapter 1.
Annual average AQI of 48 with 78% of days rated "good". Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little to no risk. It is a good day for outdoor activities.
Violent crime: 8.5 per 1,000; property crime: 24.3 per 1,000. That runs 5% above national average.
A Walk Score of 72 puts daily errands on foot for much of the city. For local SEO that means storefront visibility and "near me" searches both convert.
5 tracked parks across 4,280 acres of public green space, led by Eno River State Park. Outdoor-recreation searches follow the weather — when the parks fill, so do the related queries.
10 tracked schools, including 3 charters and 4 magnets; average GreatSchools rating 8.7/10. School quality is a top relocation driver — realtors, take note.
8 institutions and 135,810 enrolled students, led by NC State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Tech Community College. A permanent annual influx of new residents who choose dentists, gyms, and mechanics from a Google search.
12 hospitals with 3,840 beds, including 3 trauma centers. Healthcare searches carry some of the steadiest volume on any city's ledger.
5 tracked markets, including State Farmers Market Raleigh (Daily, 5:00 AM – 6:00 PM (year-round)). Weekend-morning spikes for "farmers market near me" are among the most predictable recurring search patterns there are.
35 coworking spaces tracked — a high-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 425 Mbps, 94% coverage, 72% fiber availability. Fast connections mean impatient visitors: page speed is a ranking and conversion factor here.
285 public charging stations, up 38% year over year, 45 of them DC-fast. Infrastructure that grows this fast tends to drag its install-and-repair searches up with it.
2 airports serve the metro, led by Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) with international service, 8 miles north of Raleigh. Visitor volume feeds hotel, restaurant, and attraction demand on this page.
8 tracked events, led by North Carolina Seafood Festival at Wilmington Waterfront. In the news: "Tech Industry Boom Fuels Raleigh-Durham Growth" (Research Triangle Business Journal). Event weekends measurably lift "restaurants near" and "parking" searches around the venues.
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
2 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.