Personal Injury Google Ads Clicks Cost $195.73 on Average, and Louisiana Pays the Most

A person hurt in a truck crash searches for a lawyer. Within a second, law firms bid for the chance to show them an ad, and the winner pays hundreds of dollars when that one person clicks. No other kind of business pays as much to reach a single searcher on Google.

Cost per click, or CPC, is what an advertiser pays each time someone clicks its ad, whether or not that person becomes a client. For an injury firm, it decides how many potential clients a monthly budget reaches. At these prices, a small budget buys very few clicks, so knowing which searches cost what, and where, decides whether paid search pays off.

A personal injury law click costs $195.73 on average, 18 times the $10.82 average across 18,477 keywords in 23 industries. Half of injury keywords cost $150.84 or more, truck accident searches top the price list, and prices swing widely by state, from 78% above the national price in Louisiana to 34% below it in Virginia.

In September 2026 we collected Google Ads Keyword Planner prices for personal injury law keywords, each searched at least 2,900 times a month in the US. We kept the 113 keywords that match core personal injury law terms and have a price above zero. For those we calculated the average, median and spread of cost per click and compared them with 18,477 keywords across 23 industries. We also collected state-level prices for the 25 largest states and Microsoft Ads prices for the 73 keywords priced on both platforms.

Cost per click is Google's estimate of the average price an advertiser pays for one click on an ad shown for that search. The median is the middle keyword: half cost less, half cost more. The volume-weighted average counts each keyword by how often it is searched. Each state is compared with the national price of the same keywords, so its percentage shows how much more or less a local firm pays for identical searches.

Personal injury law ranks 1st of 23 industries by average cost per click, at 18 times the cross-industry average. One injury click costs as much as 18 average clicks elsewhere. Weighted by how often each keyword is searched, the average rises to $201.88, because the busiest searches are also expensive: "car accident lawyers", the biggest keyword at 201,000 searches a month, costs $231.89 a click.

These prices reflect what a case is worth. A single signed injury case can bring a firm a large fee, so firms can afford to bid high for the searcher who might become that client, and the auction is crowded with firms that do.

The median injury keyword costs $150.84, and the middle half cost between $92.25 and $244.24 a click. 98% cost $10 or more, and the most common price band is $100 or more, holding 78 of the 113 keywords, 69%.

In most industries, a budget can lean on cheap long-tail searches. In personal injury law there are almost none: fewer than one keyword in ten costs under $50. Demand also moves through the year, peaking in September 2025 and bottoming out in April 2026, a swing of 2.7 times in total monthly searches.

Truck, rideshare and mesothelioma searches sit at the top. The most expensive keyword, "best houston truck accident lawyers", costs $972.50 a click, followed by "best truck accident lawyers" at $655.11 and "semi truck accident attorneys" at $607.13. The most expensive 10% of injury keywords cost $341.72 or more.

All of the most expensive keywords pair an accident type with "lawyer" or "attorney". Two of the top three also start with "best", the word of a searcher comparing firms and close to choosing one. Those are the searches firms treat as the most valuable in the field.

Location changes the price of the same search. Among the 25 largest states, Louisiana is the most expensive for personal injury clicks at $369.40 on average, 78% above the national price of the same keywords, followed by Colorado at $305.64 (51% above) and Texas at $296.34 (32% above). Virginia is the cheapest at $119.28, 34% below.

Microsoft Ads, which shows ads on Bing, prices the same searches very differently. For the 73 injury keywords priced on both platforms, a Microsoft Ads click costs $7.57 on average against $230.05 on Google Ads, 97% less. The volume is smaller, but the gap is the widest of any industry.

Budget per case, not per click. At a median of about $150 a click, a firm that turns one click in ten into a consultation pays about $1,500 per consultation before any case is signed. Track every call and form back to the keyword that produced it, so you know which searches bring signed cases and which only bring clicks.

Plan by market. A Louisiana or Texas firm pays far more for the same searches than one in Virginia or New Jersey, so national benchmarks mislead in both directions. Then test Microsoft Ads: the same injury keywords cost about 97% less there, so a small test shows quickly whether its leads are worth it. Our law firm ppc team sets budgets from local click prices and runs that test for injury firms.

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