Google Volumes for Key Franchise Search Phrases Surge to Highest Levels in Over Seven Years
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
August 12, 2025 — Since we last wrote about the potential impact of Google’s AI mode on franchise lead generation, Alphabet reported earnings for the second quarter of 2025, and shared key metrics to dispel the notion that generative AI was displacing traditional search.
According to Google, AI Overviews is driving over 10% increase in usage of Google for the types of queries that show AI Overviews atop other results.
Google Search and Other revenues increased by 12% to $54.2 billion for the quarter ending June 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.
Much has been written since the introduction of AI Overviews about “zero click” searches, lower click rates, and the reduction in organic results in general, all of which present headwinds to franchise developers wanting to use Google for lead generation.
But here’s an interesting tailwind. For the first time in several years, the number of searches for key phrases used by individuals to research franchises on Google has increased significantly.
Google searches for common franchise research phrases exceed pre-pandemic levels to heights not seen since late 2017.
This trend began near the end of 2024, and has grown through mid-year. See the chart below of web searches for common terms (data was downloaded and re-charted to clearly show dates). The fact that this growth is observable for several months and across multiple key terms makes it worthy of notice. Searches for these phrases are at volumes not seen since late 2017.
Note: Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given search term, region and time.
A similar jump may be seen for the broader matching term “franchises” with an order of magnitude higher search volume than the more intentional phrases above.
Further, this upward trend in business ownership interest is supported by the Federal Reserve’s data on high-propensity business applications, which also shows elevated interest since November 2024. We’ve written often about the spike in business applications coincident with the onset of the pandemic, but the recent numbers are the highest since that leap.
We don’t know why there are more Google searches and business applications since the beginning of 2025, but the coincidence of those upward trends with the election and optimism about more favorable tax and regulatory environments for small business are one hypothesis.
An increase in primary demand, as evidenced by growing search volume and business applications, would be a welcome relief to the high percentage of franchise development teams using Google and planning to increase their spending in 2025.
Franchise Ventures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
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Published on Tuesday, August 12th, 2025.