Our new research on electrical customers found that hiring searches carry most of the money, but Reddit and YouTube answer the questions that come first. The local map is thin, with most electrician listings holding only a few reviews. This week, fix your Business Profile, publish real prices, and answer one common question on video.
What Changed
- Hiring searches are worth $27.8M a month in ad clicks, 64% of all electrical click value in our data.
- Reddit is in the top 10 on 85 of the 100 electrical result pages we checked.
- Google's AI answers cite YouTube on 61 of 87 pages that showed one.
- The median electrician listing in our Maps sample has 4 reviews.
- Generator searches are up 49% on last year, and the top Reddit question is about adding a 240V circuit.
What We Measured
Most advice for electrical contractors starts with a guess about what customers want. We wanted to count it instead. So we spent a day pulling every public signal we could find about how people look for an electrician in the United States, and we wrote it up as a 15 page report. You can download the full report as a PDF.
This is our own research, measured on October 1, 2026. We pulled 15,430 electrical search terms from Google Ads data for the United States, with 12 months of volume from September 2025 to August 2026. After grouping close variants, that came to 9,177 distinct searches and about 6.3 million searches a month. We also recorded 100 full Google result pages for electrical searches.
The rest of our research came from what customers write. We classified 49,643 public Reddit posts from seven subreddits, including r/AskElectricians and r/electrical, plus 15,695 question titles from the Home Improvement Stack Exchange. We also pulled two samples of 500 Google Maps listings in the electrician category, and 993 YouTube results across 57 searches.
We did not store names or user details. Topic labels came from keyword rules, so treat the post counts as a guide to what comes up most, not an exact census.
The Five Findings
1. Hiring searches carry the money. In our data, searches to hire an electrician are worth about $27.8 million a month in ad clicks. That is 64% of all electrical click value we measured. "Electrician near me" alone gets about 368,000 searches a month at $23.25 a click, and "emergency electrician near me" costs $46.81 a click. Advertisers pay that much because a person typing those words wants someone at the door today.
2. Reddit answers the questions, not electricians. On the 100 result pages we recorded, Reddit showed up in the top 10 on 85 of them and ranked first on 47. The well known electrical brands barely register. Before people hire, they ask "is this dangerous?" and "is this quote fair?", and the page that answers them is usually a thread.
3. Google's AI answers lean on YouTube. An AI answer appeared on 87 of our 100 result pages. YouTube was cited in 61 of them, more than twice as often as Reddit at 29. No single YouTube channel dominates electrical searches either. The top channel in our sample held only 9 of the 171 top three spots.
4. The busiest local listings are not electricians. Our Maps pull counted 72,548 US listings in the electrician category. Of the 500 with the most reviews, 486 were HVAC and plumbing companies that also do electrical work. In a second sample of 500 listings, the typical electrician had 4 reviews and 210 had no website at all.
5. Backup power, panel capacity and fear drive the demand. Generator searches in our data are up 49% on last year and run three times their normal level in January. Emergency electrician searches are up 189%. On Reddit, the most common question we found is how to add a 240V circuit for a dryer, range, heat pump, hot tub or EV charger, with 3,153 posts. The angriest posts are about burning smells and sparks, followed closely by electricians who never call back.
Why It Matters for an Electrical Contractor
Put those five together and a picture forms. People are willing to pay well for electrical work. But the first thing they do is not call. They search for a reason, a risk or a price, and they read whatever answers it best. Right now that is a Reddit thread, a YouTube video or an AI summary built from both.
The answer has moved off the phone and onto the page. The shop that explains a tripping breaker in plain words, shows a starting price for a panel swap and posts a short video of the fix gets in front of the customer before the bidding starts. The shop that only buys "electrician near me" clicks is paying for the last step and skipping the first one.
The backdrop helps too. The National Association of Home Builders reports that almost half of owner occupied homes were built before 1980. Old wiring, old panels and new loads like EVs and heat pumps meet in those houses. Storms add pressure. The Energy Information Administration found that US customers averaged 11 hours without power in 2024, nearly twice the average of the decade before. That is the generator demand showing up in our search data.
Supply is tight as well. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 821,000 electrician jobs in 2025 and expects about 72,700 openings a year over the next decade. When good electricians are hard to find, the one who shows up on time and explains the work wins the review. In our Reddit data, posts about electricians who ghost or never quote score almost as angry as posts about fires.
One more change matters for EV work. The IRS says the federal credit for home charging equipment covers property placed in service through June 30, 2026. If your EV charger page still promises a federal tax credit, it is now wrong. Point customers to state and utility rebates instead.
What to Do This Week
- Fix the basics on your Business Profile. Check your hours, service area and categories. Then ask every customer this week for a review. When the typical listing has a handful of reviews, a steady habit puts you ahead fast.
- Publish starting prices for five common jobs. Pick the jobs you do most, such as a service call, an outlet, a ceiling fan, a 240V circuit and a panel swap. Give a starting number and what changes it. People search the job and the price in the same breath.
- Answer one Reddit question on your own site. Read r/AskElectricians for an hour. Take the question you see most, maybe "why does my breaker keep tripping?", and write the answer a customer can use, including the point where they should stop and call a pro.
- Film one short video. Have your best electrician explain that same problem in under two minutes on a phone. Put it on YouTube and embed it on the page. That is the format Google's AI answers quote most in our study.
- Sell the load check. Make "can my panel handle an EV charger, heat pump or hot tub?" a bookable visit with a set fee. It is the top question in the data, and it leads to the bigger jobs.
- Get ready for winter outages. Write one clear page on generator hookups, interlocks and transfer switches before January. Our search data shows generator interest peaks then.
If you track your calls, compare this with your own numbers. Our piece on why a site can rank and still never ring covers what to measure, and our guide to local SEO covers the profile basics.
What Holds Up and What Does Not
Search volumes from Google Ads are estimates rounded into buckets. Click value is volume times the average price per click, so it shows where advertisers spend, not what any one shop will earn. We also smoothed out 38 single month spikes that looked like data errors, and the report lists each one.
The Reddit work is a sample, sorted by keyword rules, not a reading of every post. People who post on Reddit skew toward the curious and the worried. The Maps sample came in the order the data provider returns it, not at random. The full method, every table and the caveats are in the report, so you can check our work.
Sources
Every number in this story comes from one of these. If a figure is ours, the paragraph says so.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Electricians
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, hurricanes in 2024 led to the most hours without power in 10 years
- IRS, Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit
- NAHB Eye on Housing, almost half of the owner-occupied homes built before 1980
- Electrician Customer Research 2026, full report (PDF)
One story a day on what changed in search, ads, AI and local marketing, and what it means for a business that lives on the phone ringing. Written by the team that runs marketing for service businesses at Clickflame. More from the desk.
Common Questions
How do I get more electrical jobs from Google without paying for ads?
Start with your Google Business Profile and reviews. In our Maps sample, the median electrician listing had only 4 reviews, so a steady review habit moves you ahead of most of the field. Then add a page for each job you want, with a real price and a way to book.
Should I post my prices online as an electrician?
Yes, at least as a starting price for common jobs. People search for the job and the price together. A clear starting number for an outlet, a fan or a panel swap answers the question that every competitor dodges, and it filters out the calls that were never going to book.
Is it worth making YouTube videos for an electrical business?
Short ones, yes. Google's AI answers cited YouTube on 61 of the 87 result pages in our study that showed an AI answer. A two minute phone video of your electrician explaining why a breaker keeps tripping can get quoted where a blog post will not.
Do I need to be on Reddit to get electrical customers?
You do not need to post there. You need to answer the same questions on your own site, in plain words, before people go looking on Reddit. Read the threads in r/AskElectricians to learn what customers worry about, then write the answer they wish they had found.
Is the federal tax credit for home EV chargers still available?
No. The IRS says the alternative fuel refueling property credit covers property placed in service through June 30, 2026. Chargers installed after that date do not qualify, so check state and utility rebates instead.
