--- title: "Cost per click is rising: what to do about it | PostCliq" description: "What cost per click is, how to calculate it, why Google CPC rose 7% a year, and the enquiry-rate arithmetic that absorbs rising click prices." url: "https://postcliq.com/blog/what-to-do-when-clicks-cost-more" --- # Cost per click keeps rising: what to do when clicks cost more every year Cost per click rose 7% a year on Google's own figures. The cost of an enquiry is that price divided by your enquiry rate. An auction sets the first and you set the second, and only one of those is worth your quarter. By [Nirmal Gyanwali](https://postcliq.com/blog/author/nirmal-gyanwali) Updated 30 September 2026 9 min read On this page 1. The short answer 2. What is cost per click? 3. How do you calculate cost per click? 4. Is cost per click really rising? 5. What is a good cost per click? 6. Why the auction does not care about your budget 7. How do you lower your cost per enquiry when clicks cost more? 8. What this does not mean 9. What to do next 10. Frequently asked questions ## The short answer Key takeaways - Cost per click is what you pay, on average, each time someone clicks your ad: total spend divided by clicks. - Google's own filings show cost per click rose 7% in 2024 and 7% again in 2025, so a click cost roughly 14.5% more in two years. - What you pay for an enquiry is cost per click divided by the share of clicks that enquire, and only the second half is fully yours. - A lift in enquiry rate cannot be bid away by a competitor, which makes it the cheapest growth most teams have. When clicks cost more every year, stop trying to win the price back in the auction and work on the share of clicks that become enquiries. Alphabet reported [cost-per-click up 7% in 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000018/goog-20251231.htm) after 7% in 2024. You cannot control that. You can control what happens on the page the click lands on. ## What is cost per click? Cost per click (CPC) is the average amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad. It is set in an auction by your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, and what competitors are willing to pay. It is a price, not a result: a cheap click that never enquires is still expensive. Cost per click, defined Cost per click is total ad spend divided by the number of clicks that spend bought. If you spent AUD 4,500 and received 900 clicks, your average cost per click was AUD 5.00. The number you actually care about sits one step later. Cost per enquiry is cost per click divided by your enquiry rate. At AUD 5.00 a click and a 2.19% enquiry rate, each enquiry costs about AUD 228 (5.00 divided by 0.0219). ## How do you calculate cost per click? To calculate cost per click, divide your total ad spend by the number of clicks for the same period and campaign. Do it by month and by channel for at least twenty-four months, so you can see whether the price is actually rising or whether a single expensive month is doing the talking. The sum has two halves and you only control one. What you pay for an enquiry is the price of a click divided by the share of clicks that become enquiries. Write it out for your own account. Take a month of spend, divide by clicks to get your average cost per click, then take enquiries divided by clicks. Those two numbers produce everything your director asks you about. The first number is set by an auction you do not run. The second is set by the pages you own. That asymmetry is the whole argument of this article. ## Is cost per click really rising? Yes, but more slowly than the headlines suggest. Google's cost-per-click rose 7% in 2024 and 7% in 2025, then 5% and 3% in the first two quarters of 2026, while paid clicks grew 13% in each of those quarters. Clicks cost more every year, and advertisers are buying more of them. Google cost-per-click growth, year on year - 2024 7% - 2025 7% - Q1 2026 5% - Q2 2026 3% Source: [Alphabet Form 10-K and 10-Q filings](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001652044/000165204426000071/goog-20260630.htm) These are Alphabet's global blended figures from its [FY2024 annual report](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204425000014/goog-20241231.htm) , [FY2025 annual report](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000018/goog-20251231.htm) and [June 2026 quarterly report](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001652044/000165204426000071/goog-20260630.htm) . Device, country and ad format mix all move them, so they describe the market, not your account. Two years at 7% compounds to about 14.5% (1.07 x 1.07). Meta reports its own ad pricing every quarter. In the three months to 30 June 2026, ad impressions delivered across its apps rose 14% year on year and the average price per ad rose 12% year on year ( [Meta second quarter 2026 results](https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx) , 29 July 2026). That is a global average across every advertiser and format. It is not your CPC and it says nothing about your category in Australia. Locally, IAB Australia reported internet advertising spend of AUD 19.8 billion in FY26, up 14%, with search the largest category at AUD 8.6 billion and up 13.2% ( [IAB Australia, 31 August 2026](https://www.iabaustralia.com.au/news/internet-advertising-records-strongest-growth-in-four-years-reaching-19-8-billion-in-fy26/) ). IAB attributes the growth partly to new investment from smaller businesses, retailers and overseas advertisers, with activity becoming always-on rather than tied to campaign cycles. Be careful with that one. Spend growing is not the same as price rising. It could be more advertisers, or the same advertisers buying more. But more advertisers bidding always-on, in a market where the inventory does not expand at the same rate, is the shape of an auction getting more expensive. It is a reason to expect pressure, not proof that you felt it. The price of attention in four numbers **+7%** Google cost-per-click, 2025, after +7% in 2024 [Alphabet Form 10-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000018/goog-20251231.htm) **+12%** Meta average price per ad, Q2 2026 [Meta Q2 2026 results](https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/) **AUD 8.6bn** Australian search advertising, FY26, up 13.2% [IAB Australia](https://www.iabaustralia.com.au/news/internet-advertising-records-strongest-growth-in-four-years-reaching-19-8-billion-in-fy26/) **USD 5.42** average Google Ads CPC, 2026, more than double 2016 [WordStream by LocaliQ (US, mainly SMB)](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks) Which is why the only figure that settles this is yours. Pull your average cost per click by month for the last twenty-four months, by channel. If it has climbed, you now have a fact instead of a feeling, and it took ten minutes. ## What is a good cost per click? A good cost per click is one your enquiry rate and contract value can afford. WordStream's 2026 benchmark puts the average Google Ads CPC at USD 5.42, but that is mostly small US advertisers. Your own ceiling is your average enquiry value times your enquiry rate. WordStream by LocaliQ's [2026 Google Ads benchmarks](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2026-google-ads-benchmarks) , across 13,000+ campaigns, also found that cost per lead fell to USD 66.69, the first fall in five years, because conversion rates rose in 87% of industries. It is a vendor dataset, but the shape is instructive: the winners did not buy cheaper clicks, they converted more of them. For CPC figures by industry and what drives them, read [how much Google Ads cost in 2026](https://postcliq.com/blog/how-much-do-google-ads-cost) . ## Why the auction does not care about your budget The auction does not care about your budget because Google orders ads by Ad Rank, and most of what goes into Ad Rank is set by other people: their bids, the competitiveness of the auction and the context of each search. Only your bid and the quality of your ad and landing page are yours. Google documents it: Ad Rank is "a combination of bid amount, the quality of your ads and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of an auction, the context of the person's search, and the expected impact of assets and other ad formats" ( [Google Ads Help](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704431) ). Read the list again. Two of those items are about you. The rest are about everyone else, and they move without your involvement. A competitor raising their bid in March changes what you pay in April, and nothing appears in your account to explain it. This is the part that is genuinely outside your control, and it is worth saying to your director plainly rather than absorbing it as a personal performance problem. The wider case, that dearer clicks and fewer organic visits make every visit worth more, is set out in our flagship report, [ad costs are up, clicks are down](https://postcliq.com/blog/post-click-squeeze) . ## How do you lower your cost per enquiry when clicks cost more? Lower your cost per enquiry by raising the share of clicks that enquire. A change to the price you pay per click gets eaten by the next competitor. A change to your enquiry rate does not, because nobody else can bid it away from you. Run the arithmetic on your own numbers. The table uses illustrative figures: a fixed AUD 4,500 a month at AUD 5.00 a click. | Scenario | Cost per click | Clicks | Enquiry rate | Enquiries | Cost per enquiry | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Today | AUD 5.00 | 900 | 2.19% | 19.7 | AUD 228 | | CPC up 7%, nothing else changes | AUD 5.35 | 841 | 2.19% | 18.4 | AUD 244 | | CPC up 7%, enquiry rate lifted | AUD 5.35 | 841 | 2.60% | 21.9 | AUD 206 | Source: PostCliq analysis, illustrative figures The third row is the point. A realistic lift in enquiry rate more than absorbs a year of price rises, without winning an auction, increasing the budget or asking anyone for more money. Those figures are illustrative. Put yours in. The method is the one PostCliq publishes: sessions multiplied by enquiry rate, then by your qualification rate, then by your win rate, then by average initial contract value. A range produced that way is a scenario built on your own inputs, not a measurement of money you lost. There is a second effect, and it is the one most people miss. Google lists landing page experience as one of three Quality Score components, defined as "how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad" ( [Google Ads Help](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404197) ). Google's own documentation states that "even if your competition bids higher than you, you can still win a higher position, at a lower price, with high-quality ads and landing pages" ( [Google Ads Help](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704431) ). So the post-click work does not only lift the second half of the sum. It leans on the first half too. Do not turn that into a promise. Google publishes no weights and no figures, and neither will we. It is a documented direction, not a quantified return. What a "below average" rating usually means, and how to fix it, is in our guide to [Google Ads landing page experience](https://postcliq.com/blog/landing-page-experience) , and the full page checklist is in [landing page optimisation for paid traffic](https://postcliq.com/blog/landing-page-optimisation) . ## What this does not mean It does not mean stop advertising. If the campaign is bringing the wrong people, no amount of page work will save it, and you should read [how to tell a website problem from a campaign problem](https://postcliq.com/blog/website-problem-or-campaign-problem) before you spend a week on the wrong half. If you suspect the account itself is leaking, start with [where Google Ads wasted spend actually goes](https://postcliq.com/blog/google-ads-wasted-spend) . It does not mean conversion work is free. It takes someone's time, and usually a developer's. And it does not mean the rate can go up forever. It cannot. But most Australian service businesses are nowhere near their ceiling, because nobody has ever looked. The first pass at a page that has never been examined is almost always the cheapest growth in the plan. Seasonal peaks make all of this sharper. Around EOFY, Black Friday and Click Frenzy, more advertisers bid for the same buyers at once. If you sell online, the [Black Friday landing page checklist](https://postcliq.com/blog/black-friday-landing-page-checklist) is the version of this work with a deadline. ## What to do next 1. **Pull your own cost per click by month for twenty-four months, by channel.** Decide whether you have a rising price problem, a rising volume problem, or neither. Do not skip this. Plenty of teams who believe clicks are getting dearer have never checked. 2. **Calculate your enquiry rate the same way twice** , once for paid and once for organic. If you cannot state in one sentence what counts as a conversion, start with [what a conversion rate actually means](https://postcliq.com/blog/what-a-conversion-rate-actually-means) . 3. **Work out your cost per enquiry** as cost per click divided by enquiry rate, and put it next to your average first contract value. 4. **Take your single highest spending landing page and walk it end to end on a phone.** Submit the form. Click every link. Time the first screen. One afternoon, no budget, and it acts on the half of the sum that stays yours. 5. **Write the findings in five lines** and take them to whoever holds the budget. A sentence like "our clicks cost 18% more than they did two years ago and our enquiry rate has not moved" gets a decision. "Ads are not working" is not. If you want the walk-through as a list you can tick off, the [one hour website check](https://postcliq.com/resources/one-hour-website-check) covers the same ground, and a [free PostCliq audit](https://postcliq.com/#try-postcliq) checks forms, speed and clarity on your paid landing pages for you. The companion piece, [every click is worth more than it used to be](https://postcliq.com/blog/every-click-is-worth-more) , makes the case to your director. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is cost per click? Cost per click is the average amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks an ad. You calculate it by dividing total ad spend by the number of clicks. It is set in an auction, so it moves with competitors' bids as well as your own. On its own it says nothing about results, so read it next to your enquiry rate and cost per enquiry. ### How is cost per click calculated in Google Ads? Your reported average CPC is your total cost divided by your clicks. What you pay in each auction depends on Ad Rank, which Google describes as a combination of your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, auction thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search and the expected impact of assets. Two of those are yours to improve. ### What is a good cost per click? A good cost per click is one your enquiry rate and contract value can pay for. WordStream's 2026 benchmark reports a USD 5.42 average for Google Ads, mostly from small US advertisers, so treat it as context. Work out your break-even: average enquiry value times enquiry rate. If your CPC sits below that with room for profit, it is good for you. ### Why is my cost per click going up? Usually because competition in your auction increased: more advertisers, higher bids, or buyers searching at peak times when everyone bids. Google's own filings show cost-per-click rising 7% a year in 2024 and 2025 across its whole market. Changes in your ad quality or landing page can also move it. Check your own twenty-four month trend by channel before you decide which it is. ### How do I lower my cost per click? You can improve ad relevance, landing page experience and expected click-through rate, which Google says can win a higher position at a lower price, and you can tighten keywords and audiences. But competitors keep bidding. The more durable lever is cost per enquiry: raise the share of clicks that enquire, and each click becomes cheaper per result without winning the auction. ### Check the half you own. The one hour website check walks your highest spending landing page in a form you can tick off. ## You cannot bid your way out. You can fix the page. WP Creative does the website work behind PostCliq. If the page work needs hands, they can help. [Talk to WP Creative](https://wpcreative.com.au/) ![Nirmal Gyanwali, founder and chief executive of WP Creative.](https://postcliq.com/authors/nirmal-gyanwali.jpg) Written by [Nirmal Gyanwali](https://postcliq.com/blog/author/nirmal-gyanwali) Founder and CEO, WP Creative · Sydney, Australia Nirmal Gyanwali has spent more than twenty years building websites, and most of that time watching them fail at the one job the business actually bought them for, which is turning a visitor into an enquiry. He founded WP Creative in Sydney in January 2016. - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirmalgyanwali/) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@nirmalgyanwali) - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/nirmalgyanwali) - [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@nirmalwpc) ## Keep reading - [**Ad costs are up, clicks are down: the 2026 case for fixing what happens after the click**](https://postcliq.com/blog/post-click-squeeze) - [**How much do Google Ads cost in 2026? CPC benchmarks and what drives them**](https://postcliq.com/blog/how-much-do-google-ads-cost) - [**Every click is worth more than it used to be**](https://postcliq.com/blog/every-click-is-worth-more) [More on The cost of traffic](https://postcliq.com/blog/topic/cost-of-traffic) · [All articles](https://postcliq.com/blog)