Same Google clicks cost 21% more: check your budget

The same non-brand Google search click cost about 21% more in April to September 2026 than in the same months of 2025, according to a study of 14 B2B advertisers. Once those advertisers' own budget choices were counted, the typical account's rise was 36%, which means how much you spend is part of the price you pay.

What changed

Grey Matter, a B2B marketing agency, followed 1,349 non-brand keywords across 14 client accounts using their own Google Ads data. The report, "Same Click, Higher Price," is dated October 2026 and was written by Andy Hendricks, the agency's head of search. Coverage is on PPC Land.

After removing the effect of budget, ad position and Google's ad relevance rating (Quality Score), the typical increase was 21%. Put the advertisers' own decisions back in and the typical account paid 36% more per click. Individual accounts ranged from a 30% fall to a 121% rise.

The caveats matter. The sample is small and comes from one agency's clients. The study is not a controlled experiment, and its 95% range runs from 1% to 44%. The report doesn't say what drove the market increase, and it doesn't include a response from Google.

Most of the rise landed in 2026. The index for the same keywords climbed about 15% between the first and second quarters of 2026, according to the report's figures.

The budget finding is the part you can act on. Across the sample, every 10% added to campaign spend raised an advertiser's own click prices by about 1.4%. Grey Matter links this to automated bidding: when a campaign gets more money, the algorithm enters auctions it used to skip, which are pricier. That is the agency's interpretation. The report doesn't say which bid strategy each account ran.

The study's window also overlaps Google's August 17 change. Budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS (goals for cost per action and return on ad spend) began delivering toward those targets that day. The report doesn't mention the change, and the steepest quarterly rise came before it.

What it means for you

Pay attention if you run non-brand Search campaigns and have raised budget recently, especially on automated bidding. You can mostly ignore this if your account is brand-only, or if it runs only Performance Max (Google's automated campaign across several channels), Shopping or Display, since the study excluded those.

The study is B2B, and it doesn't test local service businesses such as plumbers or dentists. Your numbers may look different. The budget mechanism isn't specific to B2B, though, so the same check is worth doing.

Here is the cost of doing nothing, in arithmetic only. If you spend $1,000 a month on non-brand search and click prices rise 21%, the same budget buys about 17% fewer clicks. Your account could move more or less than that.

What to do

1. Open the Keywords view and set the date range to April through September this year. Note the average cost per click.
2. Set the same date range to April through September last year and note the average cost per click again.
3. Filter out brand keywords, Broad match keywords, and campaigns on Maximize Clicks. The study excluded these, so comparing without them is more like for like.
4. Go to Campaigns > Settings for each campaign and note the daily budget and when you last changed it.
5. If you raised a budget on a campaign using automated bidding, compare cost per conversion (a booked call, form or sale) for the two months before and after. Judge the change by cost per conversion, not clicks.
6. If conversions didn't keep pace with the higher spend, consider returning the budget to a level where your cost per conversion was acceptable.

If click prices are flat and your budgets haven't moved, there's nothing to change.