When pet owners actually search
Twelve months of US search volume for the terms your customers type before they call you. The headline: boarding is violently seasonal, daycare is almost flat, and most facilities plan as if both behave the same way.
The finding that matters
Daycare demand is close to flat and boarding demand is spiky. Searches for "dog daycare near me" move about 22% across a whole year. Searches for "dog boarding near me" move 49%, and the broader term "pet boarding" swings 124% between its August trough and its December peak.
That is the difference between a habit and an event. Daycare is something people build into a routine and keep doing. Boarding is something they remember three weeks before a holiday. They are two different businesses that happen to share a building.
If your revenue is mostly boarding, you are running a seasonal business and should plan capacity, staffing and ad budget around peaks. If you want revenue you can forecast, daycare is the thing to grow, because it does not disappear in February.
The twelve month picture
| Search term | 12-mo avg | Peak | Trough | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| dog boarding near me | 182,000 | June, 246,000 | 165,000 | +49% |
| pet boarding | 26,000 | December, 40,500 | 18,100 | +124% |
| dog training near me | 124,000 | August, 165,000 | 110,000 | +50% |
| dog grooming near me | 477,000 | August, 550,000 | 450,000 | +22% |
| dog daycare near me | 80,000 | August, 90,500 | 74,000 | +22% |
| doggy daycare | 62,000 | August, 74,000 | 60,500 | +22% |
Two peaks, not one
"Dog boarding near me" peaks in June, which is summer travel. The broader "pet boarding" peaks in December, which is the holidays. Same service, different phrasing, different season.
The practical read is that you have two distinct booking waves a year and they need different lead times. Summer trips get planned earlier and more casually. Christmas boarding gets booked late and desperately, which is why so many facilities are full and turning people away in the same week.
Training peaks in August, and nobody advertises it
Searches for "dog training near me" peak in August at 165,000 and bottom out at 110,000 in November and December. August is also when grooming peaks. If you offer training, the back-to-school stretch is when demand comes to you, and it is the cheapest time to be visible because your competitors are focused on boarding.
What to do with this
- Advertise ahead of the wave, not during it. If boarding peaks in June, your budget should rise in April and May while people are planning. Bidding hardest in peak week means competing for people who have already chosen.
- Use the troughs to sell daycare. September through February is weak for boarding and steady for daycare. That is when a trial-week offer earns you a customer who pays every week for two years.
- Push grooming and training in August. Both peak then, and both are cheaper to advertise than boarding.
- Take December bookings in October. The holiday spike is real, late, and predictable. Emailing your existing daycare list in October captures it before anyone searches.
Method
We pulled twelve months of monthly search volume from the Google Ads Keyword Planner API in August 2026 for six consumer-side pet care terms, targeting the United States in English on the Google Search network. Peak, trough and swing are calculated from that twelve month series.
Limitations
- Keyword Planner rounds volumes into buckets, so the curves are stepped rather than smooth. Read direction and magnitude, not month-by-month precision.
- These are national US figures. Regional patterns differ, and a ski town or a college town will not match this curve.
- Search volume is a proxy for demand, not a measure of bookings.
- Twelve months cannot separate seasonality from a broader trend in the category.
Use this
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