Pest Control Websites Show Up for Twice as Many Questions, but Rarely at the Top
The typical pest control website in Diib's data ranks for twice the share of question-style searches as other websites. But its question keywords are less likely to rank in Google's top three.
Pest control customers often start with a question, not a company name, so the business that answers best gets the first chance at the call. Pest control sites are already showing up for those questions, which makes moving up a few positions one of the most practical wins available.
When something skitters across the kitchen floor, people don’t search “pest control company.” They ask a question: What do roof rats look like? How do I get rid of fruit flies? Are these termites? Diib’s keyword data shows pest control websites get pulled into those questions more than almost any other small business.
A question keyword is a search that starts with a word like how, what, why, can or is. These are exactly the searches that Google’s AI Overviews and AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity try to answer directly.
What the data shows
Diib looked at the Google keywords that websites with connected keyword tracking ranked for in the US between April and September 2026:
- For the median pest control website (80 sites, about 31,500 ranking keywords), 5.2% of its keywords were questions. That’s double the 2.6% median across about 12,000 websites in other industries.
- 40% of pest control websites had at least 1 in 10 of their keywords phrased as questions, versus 22% of other websites.
- But ranking position lagged. Only 10% of pest control question keywords ranked in Google’s top three, versus 15% of their other keywords. Other websites showed a similar but smaller gap (16% vs 21%).
What this does and doesn’t tell you
This is aggregated Diib keyword data. It shows which searches a site appears for, not how much traffic or how many calls those searches bring. A few sites with large libraries of pest articles pull the average up, which is why this post uses the median. The data also can’t show whether a site’s answers are good. It only shows where Google places them.
What it does show is the opportunity. Pest control businesses are already in the conversation when people ask questions, but usually not at the top, where searchers, AI Overviews and AI assistants are most likely to pick an answer.