The Most Expensive Google Ads Keyword Costs $972.50 a Click vs a $10.82 Average

Someone in Houston is hurt in a crash with an 18-wheeler and searches for the best truck accident lawyers in the city. For the law firm whose ad they click, that single click costs $972.50 on average, whether or not the person ever calls.

Cost per click, or CPC, is what an advertiser pays each time someone clicks its ad in Google's search results. Advertisers bid in an auction, so the price of a keyword reflects how much the businesses competing for it expect one customer to be worth. The most expensive keywords show where a single customer is worth the most.

At the top of the list, that is personal injury law. "best houston truck accident lawyers" costs $972.50 a click, 90 times the $10.82 average across all keywords, and every one of the 10 most expensive keywords is a search for an injury lawyer. Outside law, software and business lending keywords cost up to $295.91 a click.

In September 2026 we collected Google Ads Keyword Planner data for 20,000 US keywords, each searched at least 2,900 times a month, and ranked the 18,477 that have a cost per click from most to least expensive. For each keyword, Keyword Planner gives Google's estimate of the average cost per click, the monthly search volume and a range of bids for the top of the page.

Average cost per click is what advertisers pay for one click on average. The high top-of-page bid is Google's estimate of what the highest-bidding advertisers pay to show their ad above the search results. Monthly searches are the average number of times the keyword is searched in the US each month.

Truck accident searches dominate the top of the list. "best houston truck accident lawyers" and its singular twin, "best houston truck accident lawyer", both cost $972.50 a click, and "best truck accident lawyers" costs $655.11. Rideshare crashes ("uber accident lawyer" at $594.45 and "lyft accident attorney" at $582.85) and "mesothelioma attorney" at $507.41 complete the top group.

These searches are expensive because of what one case is worth. A truck accident, a rideshare crash or a mesothelioma diagnosis can lead to a large settlement, and injury firms are paid a share of it, so a firm can pay hundreds of dollars for a visit and still profit if a small fraction of visitors become clients. For most of these keywords, Google's estimate of the highest top-of-page bid is $1,000 a click. The busiest search on the list, "truck accident lawyer near me", is searched 74,000 times a month and still costs $379.86 a click.

Keywords this expensive are rare but not isolated. 208 keywords cost $100 or more per click, and 16 cost $300 or more. Against an average of $10.82 across all keywords, they sit in a different market altogether.

The keywords at the top of the list share three traits: a customer worth thousands of dollars, a local market where many firms compete for the same clients, and a search that signals someone ready to hire now. "near me" and city names in the keyword are a common sign of that urgency.

Outside law, a handful of software, payroll, lending and insurance keywords cost more than $200 a click. "ap automation software" is the most expensive non-legal keyword at $295.91, followed by "contract management software" at $284.13 and "payroll services for small business" at $267.15.

What these have in common is a large contract value. A business that signs up for accounts payable software or a term loan can be worth thousands of dollars a year to the company that wins it, so paying a few hundred dollars for a click from a qualified buyer still makes sense.

If your market contains keywords like these, control where your budget goes. Broad match can wander into a $500 keyword without warning, and one click can use up a small daily budget. Use exact and phrase match for expensive terms, add negative keywords for the ones you do not want, and set bid limits so a single search cannot drain the account.

High prices are also a signal of value. If competitors pay $250 or more for a keyword in your space, the customers behind it are worth a lot, and a page that ranks for the same search in the free results saves that cost on every visit. For injury and other law firms, the answer is usually a mix: tightly managed ads for the searches that convert, and strong local pages for the rest. A law firm ppc specialist who bids on case value, not on clicks, keeps these costs under control.

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