"Flying ants" was searched 60,500 times in July 2026 in the UK, "wasp nest removal" 18,100 times in August, "oak processionary moth" 22,200 times in June. Over the same year "haccp pest control" got an average of 10 searches a month and "pest control for business" 50 (DataForSEO, Google Ads, United Kingdom, October 2026).
A pest control company finds homeowners on Google, in seasonal waves and nearly always starting from a question about the pest; food businesses with HACCP obligations hardly search at all, and pages for commercial clients are there to close a contract, not to be found.
Below you'll find the search calendar pest by pest, what page one looks like in London and what to put on the site for each of the two types of client.
The pests set the calendar
Few sectors have seasons this sharp. Demand rises and falls five, ten, twenty times within a few months, and every pest has its month.
| Search | Monthly average | Peak | Low | Average CPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mosquito | 49,500 | Jul: 90,500 | Dec-Feb: 27,100 | £0.52 |
| how to get rid of bed bugs | 22,200 | Aug-Sep: 27,100 | Dec-Feb: 14,800 | £0.95 |
| pest control | 22,200 | Sep-Oct: 27,100 | Dec: 14,800 | £3.65 |
| wasp nest | 14,800 | Aug: 33,100 | Feb: 4,400 | £2.50 |
| flying ants | 12,100 | Jul: 60,500 | Nov-Dec: 1,000 | £2.60 |
| bed bug treatment | 8,100 | Aug: 12,100 | Dec-Feb: 5,400 | £4.14 |
| wasp nest removal | 6,600 | Aug: 18,100 | Feb: 880 | £3.44 |
| oak processionary moth | 5,400 | Jun: 22,200 | Dec: 880 | £1.43 |
| how to get rid of mice | 5,400 | Oct: 8,100 | Jun-Jul: 4,400 | £0.76 |
| rats in garden | 3,600 | May: 6,600 | Dec: 1,600 | £0.82 |
| mice in house | 2,400 | Sep-Nov: 2,900 | Jun-Jul: 1,600 | £1.53 |
Read in date order, the table is an editorial plan. Rats in the garden in spring, peaking in May. Oak processionary moth in June. Flying ants in July. Wasps from July to September: "wasp nest removal" goes from 880 searches in February to 18,100 in August. Mice in autumn: "how to get rid of mice" peaks at 8,100 in October. Rodents are the only service that never drops below 4,400 searches a month, so they keep a business going through the winter.
The practical point is timing. A wasp page published in July arrives when people are already searching, and Google takes weeks to rank it. Seasonal pages need to go live, or be updated, at least two months before the peak. To check the calendar in your own area, Google Trends shows the same pattern by region.
The searches that bring traffic are questions, not services
For every pest there are two searches. One asks how to deal with the problem yourself, the other looks for someone to deal with it. The first is always bigger:
- "how to get rid of bed bugs" gets 22,200 searches a month, "bed bug treatment" 8,100;
- "wasp nest" 14,800, "wasp nest removal" 6,600;
- "how to get rid of mice" 5,400, "mouse pest control" 1,300.
Whoever writes the best answer to the question also picks up some of the people who, after reading, decide not to do it themselves. The clearest case is The Pest Company, which works across Yorkshire, the North East, Cambridgeshire and Essex: its "Wasp Life Cycle Guide: Signs, Treatment & Timing", dated 11 April 2026, is the first organic result in the UK for "wasp nest", above Rentokil, the RHS and the British Pest Control Association. It's also one of the sources cited in the answer Google generates at the top of the page, the AI Overview.
The domain thepestcompany.co.uk ranks for 570 UK keywords with an estimated 4,500 organic visits a month. Rentokil, the multinational, ranks with rentokil.co.uk for 10,044 keywords and about 256,000 visits. Across the whole site there's no contest. On the question that matters in August, the regional firm is on top, because it wrote the page that answers it.
The limit is obvious: for a firm in York, a page that brings in traffic from Plymouth sells nothing. Informational content works if every article ends with the service in your area, an indicative price and a way to book. The method for building these articles is in our guide to content marketing.
In London, real pest control firms win
Unlike other home services, in pest control the local first page still belongs to the firms. On "pest control london", searched on a phone in London on 10 October 2026, the local block shows Bon Accord Pest Control (4.9 and 139 reviews), Pestcure (4.9 and 176) and Pest Control East London (4.9 and 554). All three trade under their own business name, all three were open on a Saturday. Above the block there's a row of directories: TrustATrader, Fantastic Services, Checkatrade, Yell and a Facebook page.
In the organic results Orkin UK is first with its London page, then Prime Pest Control, TrustATrader, Little Critters, TrustATrader again, Pest Protect, E.D. Pest Control, a "7 Best Pest Control Companies in London" list from Merlin Environmental, Bypest and the PestPro Index directory. Rentokil, the best-known name in the sector, isn't on page one: six of the ten results are London pest control firms.
Prime Pest Control is the most useful example. According to DataForSEO the domain ranks for 463 UK keywords, with an estimated 1,900 visits a month, a fraction of Rentokil. Yet it's second for "pest control london". Its page is called "Pest control prices London UK" and the snippet opens with "£400/420 · Affordable and effective · We are available 24/7": the price and the availability, the two things someone calling a pest controller wants to know first.
Among the related questions Google shows for this search is "Will the council help with pest control?". None of the firms on page one answers it in a title. It's a page worth writing after checking what the local councils you cover still offer and at what price, and it's a question the customer carries all the way to the quote.
For the profile, the rules are those of local SEO: "Pest control service" as the category, a service area, photos of real jobs and replies to reviews. What decides the order of the listings is covered in our guide to the local pack.
Food businesses hardly search on Google
Cafes, restaurants, canteens and food manufacturers have a specific legal duty. Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, which still applies in UK law, says in Annex II, Chapter IX that "adequate procedures are to be in place to control pests".
Yet on Google this market is almost silent. "Haccp pest control" gets 10 searches a month, "pest control for business" 50, "restaurant pest control" 90, "pest control contract" 90. Even "commercial pest control" stops at 390. With volumes this low, the restaurant owner reaches a contractor by other routes: the consultant who wrote their food safety plan, a colleague, the council. Southwark Council, for example, sends food businesses to the Food Standards Agency's one-minute coaching videos, one of which is on pest control.
Pages for commercial clients are still useful, but they do a different job: the owner reads them after someone has given them your name. They need to answer what the environmental health officer will ask. Frequency of visits, type of bait stations, a report after every visit, records for the Safer Food Better Business diary or the HACCP plan. Anyone who lands there has already decided to call someone, and is comparing.
To understand what your client has to do between visits: the Food Standards Agency's coaching film on keeping pests out of a food business (in English, about one minute).
Ads make little sense here, with 10 to 90 searches a month. What works better is direct lead generation aimed at food safety consultants and facilities managers, with the same logic described in our guide to B2B SEO.
Recommended reading: how a restaurant thinks about Google, useful for speaking the language of your food business clients.
Frequently asked questions
At least two months before the peak. In the UK "rats in garden" peaks at 6,600 searches in May, "wasp nest removal" at 18,100 in August and "how to get rid of mice" at 8,100 in October: the pages need to be live by March, June and August.
In the 12 months to August 2026 the average was about £3.65 for "pest control", £6.12 for "pest control london", £4.18 for "pest control birmingham" and £6.05 for "bed bug pest control" (converted from US dollars at the Bank of England rate of 7 October 2026). How-to searches such as "how to get rid of mice" cost under £1, but the people making them often want to fix the problem themselves.
There's no fixed threshold. On "pest control london" the three listings in the local block had between 139 and 554 reviews, and the first had 139. Category, distance from the searcher and how complete the profile is also count.
Very little: "haccp pest control" gets 10 searches a month, "pest control for business" 50 and "restaurant pest control" 90. The legal duty under Regulation 852/2004 is there, but contact goes through consultants and word of mouth, and B2B pages are there to convince people who have already found you.
Yes, as long as every article leads to the service in your area. Informational searches are two to four times bigger than service searches ("wasp nest" 14,800 against "wasp nest removal" 6,600), and a regional firm like The Pest Company ranks first in the UK for "wasp nest".
Where to start
Open Google Search Console, go to Performance and filter the queries containing "wasp". Compare August with February. In the UK "wasp nest" goes from 4,400 to 33,100 searches, more than seven times: if your site's impressions don't at least triple, Google doesn't yet associate you with that pest, and you have until June to write the page. Repeat with "mice" before August. If you'd like us to set it up with you, get in touch.
