Most advice on marketing to Hispanic customers starts with culture, social media and ads. That's fine, but it skips the first question a business owner should ask: do my customers even look for my kind of business in Spanish?
So we checked. For 33 everyday businesses, we compared how many people in the US search Google each month for the English phrase and for the Spanish one. "Dentist near me" next to "dentista cerca de mi." "Tire shop near me" next to "llantera cerca de mi." The answer changes a lot depending on what you sell.
One thing to keep in mind: this measures searches typed in Spanish, not Hispanic customers. Many Hispanic customers in the US mainly use English, and they're already in your English numbers.
Do people search for your type of business in Spanish?
Here is the full list, from the most Spanish searches to the fewest, measured against the English search for the same thing:
| Business | English searches a month | Spanish searches a month | Spanish as % of English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinic | 246,000 | 49,500 | 20% |
| Accident lawyer | 18,100 | 3,600 | 20% |
| Lawyer (general) | 40,500 | 6,600 | 16% |
| Taxes | 60,500 | 8,100 | 13% |
| Immigration lawyer | 27,100 | 3,600 | 13% |
| Laundromat | 2,240,000 | 246,000 | 11% |
| Money transfer | 49,500 | 5,400 | 11% |
| Cell phone store | 33,100 | 3,600 | 11% |
| Mechanic | 673,000 | 60,500 | 9% |
| Tire shop | 2,240,000 | 165,000 | 7% |
| Pharmacy | 2,240,000 | 135,000 | 6% |
| Barber shop | 2,740,000 | 165,000 | 6% |
| Dentist | 1,830,000 | 90,500 | 5% |
| Houses for sale | 550,000 | 22,200 | 4% |
| Mexican restaurant | 3,350,000 | 135,000 | 4% |
| Accountant | 33,100 | 1,300 | 4% |
| Gym | 1,830,000 | 60,500 | 3% |
| Daycare | 450,000 | 14,800 | 3% |
| Bakery | 3,350,000 | 90,500 | 3% |
| Hair salon | 1,500,000 | 40,500 | 3% |
| Doctor | 165,000 | 4,400 | 3% |
| Divorce lawyer | 246,000 | 5,400 | 2% |
| Grocery store | 9,140,000 | 135,000 | 1.5% |
| Car insurance | 450,000 | 6,600 | 1.5% |
| Real estate agent | 40,500 | 590 | 1.5% |
| Cleaning service | 110,000 | 1,300 | 1.2% |
| Furniture store | 1,000,000 | 8,100 | 0.8% |
| Used cars | 673,000 | 5,400 | 0.8% |
| Plumber | 823,000 | 6,600 | 0.8% |
| Electrician | 368,000 | 2,400 | 0.7% |
| Auto body shop | 201,000 | 720 | 0.4% |
| Health insurance | 368,000 | 1,300 | 0.4% |
| Landscaping | 90,500 | 210 | 0.2% |
The middle of the list sits at about 3%. Eight of the 33 businesses get at least one Spanish search for every ten in English.
The percentage isn't the whole story. Some businesses with a modest share still have huge Spanish numbers. "Lavandería cerca de mi" gets about 246,000 searches a month. "Llantera cerca de mi" and "barbería cerca de mi" get about 165,000 each. For a laundromat or a tire shop in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood, that is a lot of people looking.
What do the businesses at the top have in common?
Most of them deal with health, the law, money or paperwork: clinics, lawyers, taxes, money transfers. Our guess is that people want to understand every word before they decide on these things, so more of them search in the language they're most comfortable in. That's our interpretation, not something the numbers prove.
The rest of the top of the list is everyday errands: the laundromat, the tire shop, the mechanic, the phone store, the barber.
Why are plumbers and electricians so low?
Spanish speakers still hire plumbers. Most just don't search for one in Spanish.
Part of it is how people talk. A lot of Spanish speakers in the US use the English word for some things, or mix both languages in the same search. Someone might type "body shop cerca de mi" instead of "hojalatero cerca de mi," and Google counts that as neither of the phrases we measured. "Jardinero" is also not quite the same thing as "landscaping." So for the businesses at the bottom of the list, the Spanish number is probably low partly because people are searching in English or in a mix.
So those customers will probably find you in English, or with a mix of both. If you run one of these businesses and you speak Spanish, the place to say so is your English Google Business Profile and your English website, not a full Spanish site.
What should you do if your business is high on the list?
If you're near the top of the table, enough people search in Spanish to make it worth the work.
- Write real Spanish pages for your main services, starting from the words people type ("clínica cerca de mi," "abogado de accidentes"), not a translation of your English page.
- Fill in your Google Business Profile in Spanish too: a description that says you serve customers in Spanish, your services, and photos of your team.
- Ask Spanish-speaking customers to leave reviews in Spanish. Other Spanish speakers will read them.
- Make sure someone can answer the phone in Spanish. Showing up in a Spanish search and then not being able to talk to the caller wastes the click.
We looked at one of these businesses in detail, immigration law, in Do Spanish speakers in the US search in Spanish or English? That guide found the same kind of split: people look up the process in Spanish more than they search for the lawyer.
What if your business is low on the list?
Then a full Spanish website probably isn't where your money should go first. Do the cheap things instead:
- Say "Hablamos español" or "We speak Spanish" on your Google Business Profile and on your English homepage.
- Add one page in Spanish with your services, prices and how to book.
- If customers ask for it, mention which of your staff speak Spanish.
That way, the Spanish speakers who search in English can still see that you'll understand them.
Does advertising in Spanish cost less?
For most of the businesses we looked at, yes. In 24 of the 33, Google's estimated price for one ad click was lower on the Spanish search than on the English one. A click on "dentista cerca de mi" is about $7, compared with about $14 for "dentist near me." "Plomero cerca de mi" is about $31, compared with about $39 for "plumber near me."
In 8 of the 33 the Spanish click cost more. That includes some lawyer searches, like about $20 for "abogado de inmigración cerca de mi" against about $13 in English, and real estate agents, about $12 against $10. Accident and divorce lawyers were cheaper in Spanish. The others that cost more were money transfer, pharmacy, hair salons, bakeries and furniture stores, mostly by small amounts. Check your own business before assuming Spanish ads are a bargain.
We didn't measure social media or video, so we won't tell you which platform to use. What the search numbers show is which businesses already have Spanish speakers looking for them on Google.
If you want help with this, our Spanish SEO page explains how we do it, with plans that cover one language or both.
How we got these numbers
The search counts are Google's own estimates of average monthly searches in the United States, pulled on October 12, 2026 through DataForSEO's keyword data, which we use through OpenSEO. Google rounds these numbers, so treat them as close, not exact. The ad prices are Google's estimated cost per click for the same searches.
For each business we compared one common English search with one common Spanish search. That has limits. Spanish speakers use different words in different places, and many mix English and Spanish in one search, which we can't count. Where Google returned no data for the Spanish phrase (for example "pediatra cerca de mi" and "quiropráctico cerca de mi"), we left that business out instead of counting it as zero.
You can download every pair of searches, with both counts and both ad prices: spanish-share-by-business-us-2026-10.csv.