Google search demand by US state: estimate it before you launch

What it does

Most budget mistakes happen before the first click. A campaign is set to the whole country or to a few states chosen by feel, and only after weeks of spending does it turn out that one state brings almost all the searches while another barely shows up. Search demand is uneven: big metro areas, regional industries and local job markets all shift where people look for a product, a service or a job. Estimating demand per state before launch costs nothing, because historical metrics in Keyword Planner are free to read, and it turns a guess into a ranked list of locations.

Keyword Planner reports average monthly searches for each keyword over the last twelve months for the locations you choose, along with a monthly trend, a competition level and two top-of-page bid figures. Competition (low, medium, high) describes how many advertisers bid on the term, not how hard it is to rank organically. The low top-of-page bid is roughly the 20th percentile of what advertisers paid to appear above organic results, the high one roughly the 80th. All numbers are rounded estimates, and accounts with little spend may see only ranges in the web interface, so read them as orders of magnitude, not exact counts.

To split demand by state, run the same keyword list once per state instead of once for the whole country, and put the results side by side. Keep the list fixed: if you add words for one state only, the comparison breaks. For each state look at three things: total monthly searches for the list, the share of that volume in your highest-intent keywords, and the bid range for those keywords. A state with modest volume but cheap high-intent clicks can be a better start than a large state where every click costs several times more. Check the monthly trend as well, because seasonal peaks make a twelve-month average misleading.

Turn the estimates into budgets with simple, explicit assumptions you can revise later. Decide how many clicks a day you need for a fair test, multiply that by the low and the high top-of-page bid, and you get a daily cost corridor to compare with what you can spend. If the budget covers only a small part of demand everywhere, concentrate it on two or three states instead of spreading it thin: automated bidding and your own analysis both need enough data per location. Launch with separate campaigns or at least a per-state location report, so that after a few weeks you can compare real cost per lead with the estimate and move money.

In AdAce Ads this work is one screen: “Analytics” → “Demand”. You enter keywords, the service gets monthly searches from Google Keyword Planner, splits them into Latin-script and Cyrillic keywords and, if you wish, shows the result per US state, up to 10 states at once. For each language you choose you also get keyword ideas with competition and the top-of-page bid range. The estimate is read-only: nothing is created or changed in the ad account, and up to 20 estimates per hour are available. When the plan is ready, any campaign change, such as adding keywords, is a proposal that a person approves with a password and a second factor.

Why it helps

• See where people actually search before you choose states.
• Compare volume, competition and bids for each state side by side.
• Spot states where high-intent clicks are cheaper.
• Read-only estimates: nothing changes in the ad account.

How to set it up

1. Open “Analytics” → “Demand” and choose the client.
2. Enter your keywords, including the variants people really type.
3. Turn on the per-state view and pick up to 10 US states.
4. Choose the languages for keyword ideas and review competition and top-of-page bids.
5. Rank states by high-intent volume and bids, then budget the strongest ones.
6. Propose the chosen keywords for a campaign and approve with password and second factor.

Good to know