When people search for an injury lawyer
Ten years of Google search data, 2016–2025. February is the quietest month of the year. Late summer is the busiest. And the whole swing is smaller than this industry usually pretends.
February is the quietest month
It came in below average in 81% of the ten years we checked — the most consistent pattern in the whole dataset. Ten separate years, five different search phrases, and February lands low almost every time.
Only three months run above average: July, August and September. August is the peak.
The honest size of it
February sits 12.3 points below the annual average. August sits 5.5 above. Real, repeatable — and not a surge. If someone shows you a dramatic seasonal swing in injury search, ask what they did to the chart.
A modest swing still matters. It tells you when to take a holiday, when to staff the phones heaviest, when to launch a brand push. And most usefully, what to compare this month against. Grade August against February and you will credit your marketing with an 18-point improvement the calendar handed you.
| Month | Index | vs average | Years below avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 93.6 | −6.4 | 62% |
| February | 87.7 | −12.3 | 81% |
| March | 96.7 | −3.3 | 64% |
| April | 90.3 | −9.7 | 60% |
| May | 91.5 | −8.5 | 66% |
| June | 97.1 | −2.9 | 66% |
| July | 101.4 | +1.4 | 40% |
| August | 105.5 | +5.5 | 36% |
| September | 104.3 | +4.3 | 34% |
| October | 99.1 | −0.9 | 55% |
| November | 96.0 | −4.0 | 57% |
| December | 99.5 | −0.5 | 51% |
How we measured it
We pulled Google Trends data for five common injury search phrases — things like “car accident lawyer” and “personal injury attorney” — one year at a time, 2016 through 2025. Each month is compared against its own year’s average, so a busier year overall does not drag the whole calendar. The figures are the median of 47 keyword-years, not the average, so one strange year cannot move a month.
Two details mattered more than they sound. We asked Google for one year at a time instead of the full decade, because Trends rescales everything to whatever range you request — ask for ten years and the early years get crushed into single digits where the numbers stop meaning anything. And we switched to medians after an early version using averages produced a month scoring 533. Both mistakes are written up in the measurement audit.
What this does not tell you
It is not about your firm’s name. This tracks generic searches — people typing “car accident lawyer,” not people typing your firm. Different behaviour, different trigger, and no reason they should share a calendar. Branded demand is a separate study: who owns the name searches in your market.
It cannot tell you whether injury search is growing. Comparing each month to its own year is exactly what reveals the seasonal shape, and exactly what destroys the year-to-year comparison. You get one or the other. We took the shape.
It is national. Snow markets and sun markets almost certainly differ. We have not measured that yet, and we would rather say so than imply a local number we do not have.
Source: Google Trends via DataForSEO · 2016–2025 · five generic injury search terms · median of 47 keyword-years. BrandTerritory shares ownership with Mass Tort Ad Agency, which sells Meta advertising to law firms — including, since August 2026, brand advertising. It does not run Google Ads or brand-bidding campaigns. Methodology.
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