The One Market Where Google Is Not the Whole Answer
Across the six markets on this site, Google’s share of search runs from 97% down to 88% — and the 88% is Australia. That sounds like a rounding difference until you turn it around: roughly one Australian search in nine happens somewhere else, most of it on Bing, which is also the index sitting underneath Microsoft’s AI answers. We run a live campaign in Sydney and the numbers below are from it, not from a brochure.
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What Australia is actually searching for
Two things below, and they answer different questions. The first three rows are published third-party measurement anyone can reproduce. The last three are one live Australian campaign — Aus Topline Roofing, a Sydney roofing, guttering and asbestos contractor, running with us since January 2026.
- Google share — Australia88.22% · StatCounter, July 2026 · the lowest of our six markets
- Bing share — Australia8.74% · against 5.87% in the UK · 1.89% in Pakistan
- Device split — AustraliaDesktop 53.79% · mobile 43.54% · tablet 2.67%
- Keywords in Google’s Top 10January: 2 · August: 308 · of 1,003 tracked
- Keywords in the Top 349 · including “metal roof vs tile roof”, 44 → 1
- Google AI OverviewNamed in the AI answer for a Sydney asbestos query, May 2026
Three things we would rather put here than have you find later. Those are ranking figures, not revenue figures — conversion tracking on that account is still being implemented, so we are not going to convert 308 keywords into a leads claim we cannot evidence. The Google Business Profile reinstatement appeal we filed in February is still with Google, undetermined, so the map-pack half of that campaign has not been won yet. And the composition of the 308 matters as much as the count: the strongest cluster by far is comparison content — twenty-two variants of “metal roof vs tile roof” and roof-pitch questions, almost all at position 1 — while only around a quarter of the ranking terms that carry a Sydney or suburb name have reached the top ten. That is a real and useful position, because comparison queries reach people while they are still deciding what to buy. It is not the same thing as owning “roofing Sydney”, and we are not going to let a headline number imply that it is.
Two things are unusual here — the second engine, and the domain
Start with the engine, because it is the one nobody plans for. In most of the markets on this site, optimising for Google and optimising for search are the same sentence; at 95% or 97% share the distinction is academic. At 88.22% it is not. Bing’s 8.74% of Australian search is close to one query in eleven, and Bing does not rank the same way Google does — it leans harder on exact-match relevance signals, it treats page-level metadata more literally, and it has its own webmaster tools and its own index that a site can be absent from entirely without anyone noticing. It is also the index behind Copilot, which means a site that under-indexes on Bing under-indexes on one of the two main AI answer surfaces as well.
None of that argues for a separate Bing strategy, and we are not going to sell you one. It argues for something much cheaper: verifying the site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submitting the sitemap, checking that it is actually indexed there, and not writing metadata that only makes sense to Google’s rewriting. That is perhaps a day of work and it is the highest-return day available in this market, precisely because so few Australian sites have done it.
The second unusual thing is the domain, and it genuinely has no equivalent in the other four markets. A .com.au is not something you buy — it is a licence with an eligibility test attached, and the test is ongoing rather than one-off. auDA’s published licensing rules require an applicant to “have an Australian Presence” (Rule 2.4.1) and, for com.au specifically, to “be a Commercial Entity” (Rule 2.4.4). Australian Presence is satisfied by things like an ABN, an ACN, Australian citizenship or permanent residency, or — for an exact-match name only — an Australian trade mark.
The part that matters for SEO is the enforcement. Rule 2.11.6 states that “A Licence will be cancelled by the Registrar or .au Domain Administration, where a Person no longer has an Australian Presence.” Not suspended pending appeal, not flagged for review. Cancelled. Which means the single most catastrophic technical SEO event available to an Australian business — losing the domain outright, along with every ranking and every link ever pointed at it — is triggered by a lapsed company registration rather than by anything anyone does to the website. It sits with the accountant, not the marketing team, and it is not on anybody’s SEO checklist.
Both of those threads run through the Sydney campaign. austoplineroofing.com.au is a licensed .com.au, which is part of why it reads as a local operator to an Australian searcher rather than as a national aggregator. And the same content that took the site from two Top-10 keywords to 308 is what got it named inside a Google AI Overview in May, for “asbestos roofing removal company sydney” — alongside exactly one other provider. AI Overviews sit above every organic result on the page. That placement was earned by structured service content and visible credentials, not bought, and it is the clearest signal we have that the work transfers to the surfaces that are replacing the ten blue links.
- ✓One search in nine is not Google — Bing takes 8.74% of Australian search — half again the UK’s share — and it is the index behind Copilot.
- ✓Bing setup is a day, not a strategy — Verify, submit the sitemap, confirm indexation. Highest-return day of work in this market, and mostly undone.
- ✓.com.au is a licence, not a purchase — auDA Rule 2.4.1 requires an ongoing Australian Presence; Rule 2.4.4 requires a Commercial Entity.
- ✓Eligibility lapses cancel the licence — Rule 2.11.6: cancelled where the holder "no longer has an Australian Presence". The biggest technical risk here is administrative.
- ✓AI Overviews are winnable here — Our Sydney client was named in one in May 2026 — earned through structured content and credentials, not bought.
The worst technical SEO disaster available to an Australian business is not a botched migration. It is an ABN nobody renewed, because auDA cancels the domain licence when the eligibility behind it goes away.
What we do for Australia businesses
The same connected service we run everywhere — technical, content, links and AI search planned as one roadmap, then pointed at Australia search results specifically.
Technical SEO Audits & Fixes
Crawlability, indexation, site speed and Core Web Vitals fixed at the source.
On-Page & Content Strategy
Keyword research, content briefs and page structure built around real search intent.
Link Building & Digital PR
Earned links from relevant, credible sites — no link farms or PBNs.
Local SEO & Google Business Profile
Map-pack visibility, profile optimization and location pages that earn their place.
AI Search & Answer-Engine Optimization
Schema and answer-ready content so ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity can cite you correctly.
Reporting & Analytics
Monthly reporting on rankings, traffic and conversions — plus a live dashboard.
Where Australian search concentrates
The work is remote, so no state is out of reach. What differs between these markets is competitor depth and how much of the demand is genuinely local rather than national.
Sydney & New South Wales
Where our current Australian campaign runs. The deepest commercial market and the most agency-saturated — and the one where suburb-level queries behave completely independently of the metro term. “Roofing contractors Granville” is its own search with its own competitor set, and it went to position 1.
Melbourne & Victoria
Comparable volume, noticeably different composition — more retail, hospitality, education and manufacturing, and a competitor set that overlaps with Sydney’s less than the population figures suggest.
Brisbane & Queensland
Faster-growing and less contested, with a heavy weighting toward trades, construction and local services. Metro terms here are genuinely winnable inside a year.
Perth & Western Australia
Geographically isolated enough that it behaves as its own market. Resources, mining services and B2B, with small query volumes attached to very large contracts.
Adelaide, Hobart & the smaller capitals
Thin competition and thin content in equal measure. Usually one well-built page serves the state better than a set of suburb pages nobody searched for.
National, non-local
Plenty of Australian businesses sell everywhere and should not be chasing city terms at all. We will say so if that is you, and target accordingly.
The sectors that dominate Australia search
Sector shapes the strategy more than geography does. These are the Australian verticals where the market’s own quirks bite hardest.
Trades & Home Services
Our current Australian work sits here. Aus Topline Roofing in Sydney went from 2 to 308 Top-10 keywords between January and August 2026, across roofing, guttering and asbestos removal. It is the largest local-search category in the country and the one where two intents wear the same keyword — the storm damage that compares nothing and the re-roof that compares everything. They need opposite pages, and most trade sites build only one.
Professional & Financial Services
Selling judgement rather than product, in a market where regulatory bodies and licence numbers are checkable and expected. Named authorship and visible credentials do more here than keyword work, and they are exactly what Google’s quality guidance asks for.
Mining, Resources & Industrial
Tiny query volumes against enormous deal values. Forty searches a month can be a business, which means the reporting has to change before the SEO does — ranking reports are meaningless at this volume and enquiry quality is the only real measure.
E-commerce & Retail
Category and product-page SEO with the technical layer taken seriously, plus a specifically Australian problem: freight and delivery expectations vary enormously by state, and the pages that answer that honestly convert better than the ones that avoid it.
Education & Training
Demand is a calendar rather than a curve, and the Australian academic year runs on its own schedule. Content that arrives in the right month outperforms content that is merely better.
Healthcare & Allied Health
Google’s strictest trust standard applies, and Australian advertising rules for health services constrain what may be claimed. Both push in the same direction: attributable content from a named, qualified practitioner.
What clients say
Named clients, named companies — published with their permission.
“Working with Ghalib has been an outstanding decision for our company.”
“Working with Ghalib resulted in a boost in our organic traffic.”
“Ghalib’s clear guidance has helped improve our website’s SEO performance.”
“It was a pleasure working with Ghalib and his team.”
“We’re very thankful to Ghalib and his team for building a fully-functioning website for our business.”
“Highly professional and dedicated to achieving results.”
More of them, in full, on our reviews page.
— Our Proprietary Methodology —
The Visibility Framework™, applied in Australia
The method doesn’t change by market. What it’s pointed at does.
Visibility Score™
We baseline your rankings, technical health and AI-answer visibility against the businesses that actually outrank you in Australia — not a national average.
Custom Strategy
A keyword and content roadmap scoped to your niche and budget — which pages to fix, which to build, and which terms are worth the money here.
Execution
Senior strategists implement technical fixes, content and links as one roadmap — no juniors, no outsourcing, no handoffs between departments.
Track & Improve™
Monthly reporting and continuous optimization — we re-test what’s working, cut what isn’t, and adjust as the market moves.
Honest, No-Nonsense Commitment
No one controls Google or AI search — so we'll never guarantee a #1 ranking. What we do guarantee: if your visibility score doesn't improve within 90 days, we keep working at no extra cost until it does.
SEO pricing for Australia, in AUD
Quoted in dollars and invoiced in Australian dollars if you prefer. What moves your number is how entrenched your competitors are in the states you are targeting and how much technical debt the site is carrying — established after a free audit, not guessed at before one. Bing setup is included in every tier rather than sold as an extra, because it is a day of work and it would be embarrassing to itemise it.
Starter
A low-risk way to test SEO with us on a single site.
- Initial audit & keyword strategy
- Core technical & on-page fixes
- Google and Bing indexation verified
- Monthly reporting in USD or AUD
Growth
For Australian businesses ready to compete seriously.
- Everything in Starter, deeper execution
- Content production & link building
- Bi-weekly reporting calls in your time zone
- Optional: bundle in Social Media or Website Development
Enterprise
Multi-state or high-competition Australian brands.
- Dedicated senior strategist
- Multi-state & multi-city campaigns
- Custom reporting dashboard
- Optional: combine all 4 services for full-funnel growth
Every plan is scoped around your market — get a free audit and we’ll recommend what fits, priced in AUD.
What you’re actually committing to
Most agencies keep this in a contract you only see after the sales call. We would rather you knew now, because it is the question everyone asks second — right after the price.
- A 3-month initial term, then month to monthLong enough for the 90-day guarantee above to mean something, short enough that you are not trapped if it doesn’t work out. The wider industry standard is 6 to 12 months.
- 30 days’ notice to stopNo exit fee and no buy-out of the months you haven’t used. You leave when you decide to, not when the contract lets you.
- No setup or onboarding feeThe audit is free, and month one costs exactly what month two costs. Nothing is front-loaded.
- You own everythingAnalytics, Search Console, content, accounts and any tooling set up for you — all in your name from day one, and all still yours if we part ways.
- One fixed monthly feeAnything outside the agreed scope is quoted and approved by you before it starts. It never appears on an invoice as a surprise.
- Reporting written to be readWhat changed, what it moved and what is next — in plain English, at the cadence set out in your plan, not a 40-page export nobody opens.
These are the terms as they appear in the agreement itself — nothing here is softened for the website. The full wording lives in our terms and conditions, and you get the agreement to read before anything is signed or invoiced.
What we have here — and what we do not
We have an Australian client and we do not have an Australian office. Both halves of that are worth stating, because agencies are usually vague about the second and inflate the first.
The client is Aus Topline Roofing in Sydney, running with us since January 2026 — roofing, guttering and asbestos removal, which is about as local-search a business as Australia produces. What that account has actually needed is instructive: 26 blog posts, a YouTube channel built from nothing to 25 videos, image SEO and internal linking across the whole site, schema markup, and a link programme spread across eight different types rather than concentrated in one. The parts that moved fastest were not glamorous.
The office is Karachi, and that is the whole list — no virtual address in Sydney, no city page for a desk we have never had. Time zones are the one practical constraint and we will be specific rather than reassuring about it. Karachi is five to seven hours behind Australian eastern time depending on daylight saving, so our working day overlaps your afternoon. That is a considerably easier overlap than the one we hold for US clients.
And the thing we cannot yet show you: the map pack. We filed a Google Business Profile reinstatement appeal for that client in February with a full evidence package, and it is still with Google. Until it is determined, the local pack is a gap in an otherwise strong campaign, and we would rather have that written on the page than explain it on the third call.
- A live Australian client since January 2026. Aus Topline Roofing, Sydney. Named with permission, with the figures published.
- No Australian office, and no pretending otherwise. Head office in Karachi. No virtual address, no city list we have never had a desk in.
- A real overlap window. Our day covers the Australian eastern afternoon. Calls are scheduled in your time zone, not ours.
- Quoted in USD, invoiced in AUD on request. No conversion surprises at the bottom of an invoice.
- Your Google Business Profile, not ours. A profile needs a genuine address at the location it serves. We optimise the one registered to you.
Australia SEO questions, answered
Related SEO pages
Same service, different angle — by market, by discipline and by platform.
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