At Websites for Tradespeople, the JW Digital brand that builds websites and runs SEO for trade businesses, the question we hear most in the autumn is a simple one: when should a tradesperson put effort into their marketing? We wanted an answer from data rather than habit, so we read four years of Google search data for UK trades.
What we measured
We took 43 searches people use when they want to hire someone, such as "plumber near me", "emergency electrician" and "24 hour locksmith", across 11 trades. The monthly figures run from October 2022 to September 2026, 48 months in all, from Google Ads keyword data through the DataForSEO API.
Two rules mattered more than any others:
First, only searches that name the tradesperson count towards a trade. "Bathroom tiling" also catches people buying tiles or doing the job themselves, so searches for jobs are reported separately.
Second, close variants such as "plumber near me" and "plumbers near me" return identical figures from Google, so each group is counted once. Adding them together would double the numbers.
What the data shows
December is the quietest month for eight of the 11 trades. The exceptions are plumbing and heating, electrical and roofing, which are quietest in May or June.
Landscaping and gardening is the most seasonal trade by a distance. Searches in May run at 3.9 times their December level.
Across all 11 trades together, the busiest months are October, March and January.
January is the busiest month for roofing, building, and carpentry and joinery. October is the busiest for plumbing and heating, plastering, tiling, handyman, and painting and decorating.
Electrical and locksmiths are the steadiest trades: their demand changes least through the year.
The jobs carry the clearest seasons. Searches for "boiler service" peak around October, "loft conversion" around January and "burst pipe" around December, and in all four years each one's busiest month fell within a month of that peak.
What it means if you market a trade business
A page published in the middle of the peak is late. If you run marketing for a trades client, or for your own trade business, have the service pages, photos and reviews for the busy season in place a couple of months before it arrives. For most trades the quiet month is December, which makes it the time to update the Google Business Profile, ask past customers for reviews and plan the year.
Search data shows when people look, not which searches became jobs. Customers also find trades through maps, apps, directories and recommendations that this data does not count, so the most useful number is still the one you collect yourself: ask every customer how they found you.
The full calendar and the data
The month by month calendar for each trade, the job searches, estimated click prices and the full method are in our seasonal search demand study for UK trades. Both data tables download as CSV files from the same page, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a credit.
Websites for Tradespeople is a trading name of JW Digital Services Ltd, based in Manchester.
