A click on "personal injury lawyer" in costs --. The same click in costs --. That's 0x more for the exact same keyword, shown to the exact same type of person, just in a different city.
The gap between those two numbers is $0. That's not a rounding error. That's the difference between acquiring a lead and setting money on fire.
Legal services is the most expensive industry in paid search. US law firms spend an estimated $10 billion annually on digital advertising, and CPC is the single largest cost driver in client acquisition. Yet most firms run campaigns in their home market without knowing what the same keyword costs two states over. They optimize bids, test ad copy, refine landing pages, but never question whether the geography itself is the problem.
We used Sextaris to check "personal injury lawyer" across all 75 US Designated Market Areas simultaneously. The results paint a picture that should make any legal marketer reconsider their geo-targeting.
The full picture
Each dot is a metro area. Color shows CPC (green = cheap, red = expensive). Size shows monthly search volume.
Figure 1: CPC heat map for "personal injury lawyer" across 0 US DMAs. Real data from Google Ads data.
All 0 DMAs, ranked by CPC
Keyword: "personal injury lawyer." Data from Google Ads data. CPC represents the 12-month average.
| # | DMA | Vol/mo | CPC Avg |
|---|
Green-highlighted rows: cheapest 20%. Red-highlighted rows: most expensive 5. Competition index is 0-100, where 100 = maximum advertiser density.
CPC distribution
Every DMA, sorted from cheapest to most expensive. The curve is not linear.
Figure 2: CPC distribution across all 0 DMAs. The cheapest DMAs (green) cluster at the left; the curve steepens sharply in the top quartile.
The CPC desert: 0 DMAs where clicks cost under $20
0 DMAs offer clicks on "personal injury lawyer" for less than $20. The obvious assumption: these are tiny markets with no search demand. The data says otherwise.
Volume doesn't predict cost
Conventional PPC wisdom says high-volume keywords cost more. In aggregate, that's roughly true. But the DMA-level data reveals cases where the correlation breaks completely.
Figure 3: Volume vs. CPC scatter plot. Each dot is a DMA. Outliers labeled. The weak correlation at the DMA level creates opportunities.
A PPC manager optimizing only for volume would target the largest metros. A PPC manager optimizing for cost-per-lead would look much harder at DMAs in the lower-right quadrant of this chart: real search volume, fraction of the CPC.
The neighborhood effect: inside New York City
The DMA-level view is useful but blunt. Within a single metropolitan area, CPC can vary just as dramatically at the neighborhood level. New York City is the clearest example.
Figure 4: CPC by NYC borough for "personal injury lawyer" variants. Real Google Ads data.
What this means for your budget
Three things any advertiser bidding on high-CPC keywords can do with this type of data:
Check your keyword across all 75 DMAs
Run your primary keyword through all US metro areas in a single check. Sort by CPC. The spread will likely surprise you. The data is available at sextaris.com.
Identify 3-5 expansion DMAs where CPC is under half your current market
If you're paying $50+ per click in your home market, any DMA under $25 is worth testing. Allocate 10-20% of budget to a 60-day test in these cheaper markets. Track cost-per-lead, not just CPC. A $10 click that converts at 3% is cheaper than a $50 click that converts at 5%.
Test Spanish-language keywords in Hispanic-heavy metros
In New York, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Spanish-language search terms carry real volume at substantially lower CPC. If your firm serves Spanish-speaking clients (or could), this is the lowest-hanging fruit in legal PPC. Sextaris auto-translates keywords and checks volume in the target language.
Methodology
All data was collected via Sextaris, which queries Google Ads data (the same data that powers Keyword Planner). CPC figures represent the 12-month average cost-per-click. Competition index is a 0-100 scale reflecting advertiser density. Data collected April 2026. Monthly search volumes are rounded to the nearest standard bucket by the API.
Questions I get about this data
Real questions from PI firms, paid-search agencies, and budget planners.
Why does the same keyword cost so much more in some metros than others?+
Auction density. In top-tier metros, dozens of personal-injury firms bid against each other for the same intent — every click is contested. In thin-auction metros, the firm count is small and the auction is shallow, so CPC collapses. The spread between cheapest and most expensive metro for the exact same keyword is $0.
How is "personal injury lawyer" representative of legal CPCs in general?+
It is the most-bid PI keyword and a good benchmark for any legal vertical with high settlement values (mass tort, vehicle accident, workers comp). The same metro-by-metro pattern holds for "car accident lawyer" and "truck accident attorney" — the absolute numbers shift but the relative ordering of metros is consistent.
What does the Spanish-language NYC overlay show?+
Within New York DMA, Spanish-language PI keywords (abogado de accidentes, abogado lesiones personales) have their own CPC distribution that lags English by 30-50% in many boroughs. We overlay the two on the borough-level view so multilingual buyers can see where the language premium is wider or narrower.
How current is the CPC data?+
Google Ads Keyword Planner top-of-page bid range, pulled the month before publication. CPCs in this vertical shift by single-digit percentages quarter-to-quarter — the rankings are stable, the absolute dollars drift.
How can I use this to plan budget?+
Take your target metros, look up their CPC here, multiply by your expected click volume from Google Ads, and you have a defensible baseline ad-spend budget. The "CPC desert" section flags 24 metros where clicks cost under $20 — useful if you can expand your geographic footprint.
Can I download the metro list?+
The ranked DMA table above lists all 75 metros with CPC, search volume, and demographic context. A downloadable CSV is on the roadmap; until then the table is screen-scrape-friendly into Sheets.
Check your own keyword across all 75 US metros
The CPC spread between DMAs is where ad budgets quietly die. Sextaris runs your keyword across every metro in one pass — with Spanish-language volume on the same page.
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