Pest Control Industry Trends for 2027: What's Changing in Marketing

The pest control industry trends that will shape your marketing in 2027 mostly come from search changing. Google’s AI answers are taking clicks from how-to searches, Local Services Ads now run inside Google Ads, homeowners are asking ChatGPT who to call, and private equity money keeps pushing lead costs up. Below is each trend, its source, and what I’d do.

Google’s AI answers are taking clicks from how-to searches

AI Overviews sit at the top of a lot of Google searches now, and AI Mode turns a search into a full conversation. Either way, people get an answer before they see a website.

Two studies put numbers on it. Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords and found an AI Overview cuts the click-through rate of the top-ranking page by about 58% (Ahrefs, February 2026). Seer Interactive found that from mid-2024 to September 2025, organic click-through rate fell 61% on informational searches with AI Overviews, and paid click-through rate on those searches fell 68% (Search Engine Land).

Both studies looked at informational searches, like “how to get rid of carpenter ants.” Someone typing “exterminator Columbus” wants a company, and Google usually answers that with ads and the map pack. Most of the traffic disappearing is blog traffic from people who were never going to book a service.

So change what you measure. Judge your marketing by calls, forms and booked jobs instead of website visits. Put your effort into service and city pages, the ones people land on when they’re ready to hire. Clicks are still there for sites built around those searches. After we built a new website for Invicta Pest Control in Raleigh, North Carolina, its organic clicks grew 3.4x over the same months a year earlier, according to Search Console.

Keep writing blog posts, but write ones only you could write, with what you’ve seen on real jobs. Seer also found brands cited in AI Overviews got 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than brands that weren’t.

Homeowners are asking ChatGPT who to call

BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults found that the share using ChatGPT and other AI tools for local business recommendations jumped to 45%, from 6% the year before. That makes AI the third most popular source of recommendations, behind Facebook and Google, and more people trust it (40%) than don’t (32%), according to BrightLocal.

An AI assistant can only recommend you based on what it finds about you. That means your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and whatever other sites say about you.

Start by making your name, address, phone number and hours match everywhere they appear. Inconsistent business details are one of the most common problems in my audits, and they hand an AI tool conflicting facts. Give each service and each city you serve a real page, not a copy-paste city page with the town name swapped, which rarely gets traffic anyway. Keep reviews coming in, since a review that mentions the service and the town tells an AI tool what you do and where. Get your name on other local sites too, like your chamber of commerce or a team you sponsor.

Then every few months, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for the best pest control company in your city and see who comes up.

Local Services Ads moved into Google Ads

Since August 2026, Google has been moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns built for pay-per-lead goals, starting with a small group of US advertisers, according to Search Engine Journal. You still pay per lead, and the ads still show only on Search and Maps, but budgets, bidding and the lead inbox all move into Google Ads. Your business name, address and hours now sync from your Google Business Profile too, so a change on the profile shows up in your ads.

Some of the fastest-growing companies I’ve interviewed lean hard on these ads. Dave Bradford, CEO of Certus Pest, told me Certus wasn’t doing what it should with them until it hired its CMO, Juan Rezk, in 2023, and now they’re a staple (Dave’s episode). Chase Goodeill, who grew Pest Control Consultants to $11M, called them the most powerful form of digital once they’re dialed in (Chase’s episode).

Most owners can still run Local Services Ads themselves. When your migration notice arrives, download your performance reports, because historical reports don’t carry over. My guide to Google Ads for pest control covers what changes and what to check after the switch.

Every lead costs more

WordStream’s 2025 benchmarks, based on more than 16,000 campaigns, found cost per click went up in 87% of industries, and the average cost per lead rose to $70.11 from $66.69 the year before, per Search Engine Land. Pest control isn’t broken out on its own.

Money coming into the industry adds to it. When I talked with Paul Giannamore of The Potomac Company, he pointed out that as capital pours into pest control, customer acquisition costs climb (Paul’s episode).

You can’t control ad prices, so build lead sources you own. A Google Business Profile and website that keep ranking, steady reviews and referrals all bring in work without a bill for every click, which is the whole case for pest control SEO. Tighten the paid side too. WordStream also found nearly 29% of the accounts it reviewed had zero conversions over 90 days, and that accounts using negative keywords saw conversion rates up to three times higher.

Private equity is behind several pest control industry trends

Buyers are still paying up. Paul told me scarce companies that draw several buyers are selling for 12 to 15 and sometimes 20 times EBITDA. He described a premium company as one growing at least 6% a year (ideally around 10%), with roughly 80% recurring revenue, gross margins in the high 50s to high 60s, and $5 million or more in revenue.

In your market, that money shows up as well-funded competitors bidding on the same searches and buying the local brands you compete with. It also changes how buyers look at your marketing.

Growth is part of what you sell. Brent Agee, CEO of AXN Growth Partners, told me he’d pay more for the same company growing 20% than one growing 5% or 8%, even with a little less EBITDA. He asks owners not to cut marketing to pump up EBITDA before a sale (Brent’s episode).

Your listings and your name are assets too. When Chase bought a Chicago company with 6 Google Business Profile listings, each with 250 or more five-star reviews, his team signed up 3 new customers for every one who canceled, from free leads those listings and the website brought in. He keeps strong acquired listings and phone numbers running. Certus kept the Las Vegas Pest Control name because, as Dave put it, the lead generation from owning that name in Vegas is extremely powerful.

If you might sell in the next few years, keep marketing steady and keep your profile and reviews strong. If you’re the buyer, think hard before you shut off a listing with years of reviews on it.

Reviews have to be recent

BrightLocal’s 2026 survey also found that 74% of consumers look for reviews written in the last three months, and 89% expect owners to respond to reviews. The share who always read reviews when browsing for a business rose to 41%, from 29%. Google is still the top review site, but the share of consumers using it for reviews dropped from 83% to 71%.

Other sites matter more as that happens. Dave told me Certus bought a Las Vegas business that was killing it on Yelp, then took Yelp to other markets. It doesn’t work everywhere, but it has done pretty well where they’ve tried it.

Slow review velocity shows up in most of the audits I do. A company can have hundreds of reviews and still look stale if the newest one is from last spring. Set up a system that asks every customer after every service, make it part of the technician’s job, and answer every review, good or bad.

Your Google Business Profile is doing more work

Google retired Q&A on Business Profiles and replaced it with Ask Maps, a Gemini feature in Google Maps that writes answers about your business in real time. It pulls from your profile, your reviews and your website, and from other sites when it can’t find an answer there. As of March 2026 it was live in the US and India, and there was no way to report or correct a wrong answer, according to BrightLocal. Add the Local Services Ads sync, and your profile now feeds your ads, your map rankings and Google’s AI answers.

That makes the basics matter more, and the basics are where I see the most problems in audits. Profiles often aren’t linked to their matching location page on the website. Business details on the profile don’t match the website or the directories. Reviews trickle in a few a month, if that.

A well-run profile pays off. For Arete Pest Control, a client in Norcross, Georgia, Google Business Profile calls went up 57%, with 441 calls in the 4 weeks from January 27 to February 24, 2025, compared with the 4 weeks before, tracked in CallRail. SmartGreen Pest Control in Woodstock, Georgia, went from an average map rank of 8.0 to 1.0 on a 7x7 grid three months later. You can track your own map rankings with a heatmap, and our Google Business Profile service covers the rest.

Short video is how homeowners get to know you

Adam Holt, a board-certified entomologist, built a TikTok account past 500,000 followers by posting 3 times a day, using hashtags and sounds that were already trending, and filming raw videos on his phone. He posts every video to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook Reels, and he told me people go to social media for raw content, not polished commercials (Adam’s episode).

You don’t need to go viral. A lot of my clients find me somewhere else first and then watch the podcast, and a feed full of real jobs can do the same work for a pest control company. As AI content fills every feed, I think people will want to see the actual owner and the actual technicians.

Have your techs film jobs with the flash on, post short clips to TikTok, Reels and Facebook, and upload the best ones to your Google Business Profile, where plenty of companies have a handful of photos or none. Your face and your trucks are part of your brand.

Questions pest control owners ask

What is the biggest pest control marketing trend right now?

AI in search. Google’s AI answers take clicks from how-to searches, and homeowners are asking ChatGPT for recommendations. Both reward accurate business details, real service and city pages, and steady reviews.

Which services are pest control companies adding?

In PMP magazine’s 2026 State of the Industry coverage, 46% of pest management professionals planned to add services in 2026. Mosquito control led at 13%, followed by wildlife management at 9%, then tick control and crawlspace encapsulation at 8% each, per PMP. Each new service needs its own page, its own ad campaign and a spot in your Google Business Profile services.

Is SEO still worth it with AI Overviews?

For local searches, yes. The studies showing big click losses looked at informational searches. Searches that book jobs, like “pest control” plus your town, still lead people to ads, the map pack and websites.

How much should a pest control company spend on marketing?

Brent Agee told me marketing runs 6% to 10% of revenue across AXN’s brand P&Ls, but he cares more about whether you can close the leads. Sometimes AXN doubles a new partner’s budget and finds the leak within about a week, whether it’s response time, follow-up or closing. Then it turns spending back down, trains the team and turns it up again. Don’t spend a set percentage just because someone told you to.