Google Ads Cost Benchmarks (U.S.)
What search advertising costs right now — average CPC, CTR, conversion rate, and cost per lead — from named, dated public sources, with the caveats stated.
Free · no signup · last reviewed August 29, 2026
The most-cited public source for U.S. search advertising costs is LocaliQ’s search benchmarks report, which aggregates thousands of advertiser accounts and updates periodically (figures below from the June 2026 update).
| Metric (U.S. search, business services) | Average |
|---|---|
| Cost per click (CPC) | $5.87 |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | 6.10% |
| Conversion rate | 4.85% |
| Cost per lead (CPL) | $93.69 |
Source: LocaliQ Search Advertising Benchmarks, updated June 2026. Category shown: business services; LocaliQ publishes per-industry breakdowns that vary widely around these figures.
For B2B software specifically, Kampaio’s 2026 analysis puts blended non-brand CPC around $5.34, with agency-reported medians of $8.50–$14.00 for competitive terms (Kampaio and Two Spouts, 2026) — a useful illustration of how much vertical changes the picture.
How to actually use these numbers: as sanity checks, never targets. Your market’s real CPC emerges within ~100 clicks of a live campaign, and your own break-even math outranks any national average. Plug these defaults into the budget planner to model, then replace them with your data the moment you have it.
Next scheduled re-verification: on or before the 90-day review date shown above. If the sources publish updates sooner, this page updates sooner.
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