The research we did before choosing where to work, published in full with the sources, so anyone writing about the trade can use it.
Tell us what the door is doing. The estimate is free either way.
A garage door company publishes a lot of pages about springs and openers. This one is different: it is the research we did before choosing where to work, published in full, with the method and the sources. It covers 40 US cities, what people search, what advertisers bid for the click, who is on page one, and how strong they actually are.
Last updated September 2026. Every figure below is computed from the source files, not typed in.
If you write about the trade, the home-services market or local search, you are welcome to use any of it with a link to this page as the source. The two tables are the whole dataset; nothing has been left out because it made a market look worse, and the cities we decided not to open in are listed alongside the ones we did.
The median city has 100 searches a month and a CPC of 42.60 USD. Across the 40 cities, monthly searches for garage door repair range from 20 to 6600, and the median Google Ads CPC is 42.60 USD. The highest is West Des Moines, IA at 124.07 USD. A garage door click is among the most contested a home-service business bids on, which is why the organic results matter so much.
A local pack showed in 16 of 40 cities. We checked the live results, not a cached label. In 16 of the 40 cities Google shows the three-business map pack above the organic results, so the businesses in it take the first three clicks before any website is seen.
Aggregators take a median of 3 of the top 10. Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack and their peers hold a median of 3 of the ten organic spots. In the worst cities they hold six. A local company is competing for what is left.
Where a local company is #1, it usually has very few links. In the 24 markets we operate in, 10 of the #1 results are a national franchise or a manufacturer (Overhead Door, Precision Door, Clopay, Wayne Dalton). In the other 14, the #1 is a local company with a median of 11 real referring domains after junk and spam links are removed, and 5 of them have three or fewer.
6 of 40 states asked for a license or registration. State rules differ: 6 of the 40 cities sit in a state that requires a contractor license or a registration to trade as a garage door company; the rest require nothing beyond a business license.
Ordered by monthly searches. CPC is the Google Ads figure for 'garage door repair' plus the city name. 'Aggregators in top 10' counts Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack and similar sites among the ten organic results.
| City | Searches / month | Google Ads CPC (USD) | Competition | Local pack | Aggregators in top 10 | State license to trade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston, TX | 6600 | 36.78 | Medium | yes | 3 | none |
| Dallas, TX | 4400 | 52.52 | Medium | yes | 2 | none |
| Fort Worth, TX | 2400 | 64.70 | Medium | yes | 3 | none |
| San Antonio, TX | 2400 | 57.78 | Medium | yes | 3 | none |
| Austin, TX | 2400 | 47.37 | Medium | yes | 3 | none |
| Chicago, IL | 2400 | 29.04 | High | yes | 3 | none |
| Arlington, TX | 1900 | 43.39 | Low | yes | 3 | none |
| Rochester, NY | 1900 | 30.68 | Low | yes | 2 | none |
| Allen, TX | 1600 | 21.65 | Low | yes | 4 | none |
| Garland, TX | 1300 | 42.98 | Low | yes | 3 | none |
| Colorado Springs, CO | 1300 | 45.44 | High | yes | 2 | none |
| Boise, ID | 1300 | 29.71 | Medium | yes | 3 | registration |
| Frisco, TX | 1000 | 45.86 | Medium | yes | 3 | none |
| Louisville, KY | 1000 | 45.13 | High | yes | 2 | none |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 880 | 66.76 | High | yes | 2 | none |
| Tulsa, OK | 720 | 72.93 | High | yes | 2 | none |
| Stillwater, OK | 170 | 30.65 | Low | no | 5 | none |
| North Richland Hills, TX | 110 | 41.41 | Low | no | 3 | none |
| Ashland, KY | 110 | 16.63 | Medium | no | 6 | none |
| Newton, MA | 110 | 15.53 | Medium | no | 2 | registration |
| Moore, OK | 90 | 75.17 | High | no | 3 | none |
| West Des Moines, IA | 70 | 124.07 | Medium | no | 2 | registration |
| Milford, CT | 70 | 65.69 | High | no | 3 | registration |
| Ballwin, MO | 70 | 59.19 | Medium | no | 3 | none |
| Danville, KY | 70 | 22.52 | High | no | 6 | none |
| Easton, PA | 50 | 68.32 | High | no | 3 | registration |
| Desoto, TX | 50 | 65.11 | High | no | 2 | none |
| Winchester, KY | 50 | 41.23 | Low | no | 4 | none |
| Frankfort, KY | 50 | 37.64 | High | no | 4 | none |
| Garden City, KS | 50 | 26.39 | High | no | 5 | none |
| Niagara Falls, NY | 40 | 44.91 | Medium | no | 3 | none |
| Dover, NH | 40 | 29.33 | High | no | 4 | none |
| Fishers, IN | 40 | 17.72 | Low | no | 2 | none |
| Junction City, KS | 30 | 35.84 | Medium | no | 5 | none |
| Rochester, NH | 30 | 25.35 | High | no | 3 | none |
| Anderson, IN | 20 | 58.20 | Medium | no | 3 | none |
| Hazleton, PA | 20 | 53.47 | High | no | 4 | registration |
| Raytown, MO | 20 | 42.23 | Low | no | 3 | none |
| Watertown, NY | 20 | 34.41 | High | no | 3 | none |
| Auburn, NY | 20 | 19.87 | High | no | 5 | none |
For our own 24 markets we went one step further and looked at who holds the top organic spot and how many real referring domains they have. Franchise and manufacturer sites inherit links from their whole network; local companies mostly have almost none.
| Market | #1 on Google | What it is | Real referring domains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amarillo, TX | dockinsdoors.com | local company | 0 |
| El Paso, TX | elpasodoor.com | local company | 1 |
| Irving, TX | irvinggaragedoorrepair.org | local company | 1 |
| Meridian, ID | meridiangaragedoorrepair.com | local company | 1 |
| Georgetown, TX | garagedoorsgeorgetown.com | local company | 3 |
| Killeen, TX | killeenoverheaddoors.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 3 |
| Renton, WA | fixliftgaragedoor.com | local company | 4 |
| Philadelphia, PA | phillyoverheaddoors.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 5 |
| Kansas City, MO | precisiondoorkc.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 6 |
| Denver, CO | ankmar.com | local company | 10 |
| Naperville, IL | oconnorgaragedoor.com | local company | 13 |
| Brooklyn, NY | brooklyn-garage-doors-gates.com | local company | 18 |
| Kent, WA | garagedoorseattle.com | local company | 18 |
| Lewisville, TX | geniesalesandservice.com | local company | 22 |
| Tulsa, OK | okdiscountgaragedoor.com | local company | 51 |
| Arlington, TX | familychristiandoors.com | local company | 53 |
| Pittsburgh, PA | gielgaragedoors.com | local company | 53 |
| Bellevue, WA | precisiondoor.net | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| Spokane, WA | wayne-dalton.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| Boise, ID | overheaddoor.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| Corpus Christi, TX | overheaddoor.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| Lincoln, NE | overheaddoor.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| New Haven, CT | clopaydoor.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
| Omaha, NE | overheaddoor.com | national franchise or manufacturer | 100+ |
Free to cite and reuse with a link. Copy the line below, or link any figure straight to this page.
<a href="https://onpointprodoors.com/garage-door-repair-search-study-2026/">Garage Door Repair Search in 40 US Cities (2026) </a> - On Point Pro Doors, September 2026. Google Ads and live search data via DataForSEO.
Search volume and CPC: Google Ads keyword data via the DataForSEO API, keyword 'garage door repair' with the city, September 2026, city-level location codes rather than national ones. Local pack and top-10 composition: live Google organic results per city via DataForSEO, desktop, September 2026, twenty results deep. Referring domains: DataForSEO backlinks index, live links only, ordered by rank, top 100 per site, with shorteners, scrapers, free-hosted and expired-domain networks removed by rule. Licensing: each state's contractor board, checked by hand.
Limits worth knowing: Google Ads rounds volumes, so small cities show as 20, 30 or 40 rather than exact figures. A local pack can vary by where the searcher stands; we checked from the city center. Referring-domain counts are capped at 100 per site.
Search volumes and CPC are Google Ads keyword data for the term 'garage door repair' plus the city, pulled through DataForSEO in September 2026. Local pack and aggregator counts are from live Google results for each city, pulled the same month. Referring-domain counts are DataForSEO's backlink index, with URL shorteners, scraper sites and free-hosted throwaway domains removed.
They are the cities we researched when deciding where to open. We kept every one, including the ones we decided against, so the table is not a highlight reel.
A site that lists many companies rather than being one: Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, Porch, Houzz, Nextdoor, Facebook business pages and the like.
A domain that would exist if search engines did not. We drop link shorteners, 'website worth' scrapers, expired-domain networks and free-hosted pages, which made up most of the raw count on several sites.
Yes, with a link back to this page as the source. If you would like the underlying file, ask and we will send it.
Once a quarter, and the date at the top of the page changes when we do.
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Tell us what the door is doing. The estimate is free either way.