Crypto PR search demand fell 64% in a year. The buyers didn't leave. The queries did.

By Omer Dede, Founder & CEO

Author bio: Runs the desk. Ten years across crypto media, exchanges and agency-side PR.

Last updated: 3 August 2026 · Measurements taken 3 August 2026

We measured 356 keywords across the crypto PR and marketing category on 3 August 2026. 327 of them are down year on year. The head term of the entire category, crypto pr agency, is now 390 US searches a month, falling 64%. Terms that defined the market three years ago are down 88% to 93%.

The obvious conclusion is that nobody is buying crypto PR any more. The data does not support that conclusion, and the reason it does not is the useful part of this piece: while search volume collapsed, the price advertisers pay per click went up, and the buying conversation moved somewhere that search-volume tools cannot see.

What we measured

Google Ads monthly search-volume series, pulled 3 August 2026 for a 356-keyword universe covering crypto PR, crypto marketing, press-release distribution, influencer/KOL marketing and the generic newswire market, in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore.

The head terms individually

The honest caveat, stated before anyone else states it for us. Our twelve-month window runs from July 2025 to June 2026, and it opens on an autumn 2025 volume spike. A change measured from a spike month to a normal month overstates the structural rate of decline. The direction is solid and it is consistent across 327 of 356 keywords. Do not quote −70% as a structural annual rate. We do not, and settling the true rate needs three or more years of history, which we have not run.

The part that contradicts the obvious conclusion

If demand for crypto PR had genuinely evaporated, advertisers would stop bidding. They have not.

Nobody sustains a $69 click on traffic that does not convert. Those are the prices advertisers are paying, right now, for a few hundred searches a month. The correct reading of a shrinking-volume, rising-price market is not that the buyers left. It is that the remaining searches are unusually valuable, because the people still typing them are late in a purchase rather than early in one.

Two further measurements point the same way.

The comparison queries a buyer actually asks have no recorded volume at all. crypto pr agency reviews, best crypto pr agencies 2026, and head-to-head queries between named agencies return no data in the United States, United Kingdom or Singapore. Buyers obviously still compare agencies. They are simply not comparing them in Google's search box.

Almost every commercial query in this category now returns a generated answer. Of the 28 money keywords whose live results we captured, 25 render a Google AI Overview. The answer to "which agency should I use" is being assembled above the results, from listicles, forums and directories. Clicking through to compare vendors is no longer the default behaviour, so the queries that used to represent that behaviour have thinned out.

And the decline is category-wide, not competitive. We also measured branded search for the eight largest agencies in this market. Every one of them is down year on year, between −33% and −77%. This is not one company losing share. The whole category's search demand is contracting for agencies and buyers alike.

Where the demand actually went

Three places, and only one of them is Google.

1. Into generated answers. With an AI Overview on 25 of 28 commercial queries, the shortlist is being built before a single blue link is clicked. Whoever is cited in that answer is on the shortlist; whoever ranks #4 organically may as well not exist.
2. Into third-party lists and communities. For "best crypto PR agency", the top of Google is a Reddit thread, conference-site roundups and review directories, the same sources the generated answers cite. The evaluation happens inside those documents.
3. Into the generic newswire market, where it always was. Roughly 98% of the volume in the press-release keyword cluster is generic, not crypto: 1,560 crypto searches against 75,880 total in the United States. Those generic terms defend at keyword difficulty 80 to 100 and belong to wire services selling self-serve distribution. It is a big number attached to a different buyer.

What this changes if you are buying

Stop judging a PR agency by its organic traffic. In a category whose head term is 390 searches a month, a large traffic number almost certainly comes from a keyword that is not your buying question. It may not even be crypto.

Ask where an agency appears when the question is asked as a question. Ask an AI engine to recommend an agency in your niche and look at which sources it reads. That source list is now a more honest map of who is visible than any ranking report.

Do not confuse a shrinking market with a bad one. A category with a $55 cost per click and a keyword difficulty of 11 on its head term is a category where visibility is cheap to buy and cheap to earn. Contracting demand and low competition are the same condition described twice.

If you want to talk about where your own coverage should be placed, tell us what you are launching. What we do and what it costs are the two pages that answer the rest.

Method and limitations

Volume, cost-per-click, competition and keyword-difficulty figures are Google Ads and third-party SERP data pulled on 3 August 2026 for the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore. Year-on-year comparisons use the monthly series for July 2025 through June 2026.

Three limitations we will not paper over:

Twelve months is not a trend.

The window opens on a volume spike, which inflates the magnitude of every decline in it. Direction, not rate.

Low-volume keywords sit on a reporting floor.

Google reports small volumes in banded steps, so a keyword at the floor can show a dramatic percentage change from a small absolute one. The category-wide finding survives because it holds across 327 keywords, not because any single one is precise.

Search volume is not demand.

It is demand expressed as a Google query. This entire article argues that the gap between those two things has widened, which is exactly why the volume numbers should not be read as a market size.

Frequently asked questions

Is the crypto PR market shrinking? Search demand for it is, sharply: of 356 keywords measured on 3 August 2026, 327 fell year on year, and the category head term crypto pr agency fell 64% to 390 US searches a month. But advertiser cost per click on the same terms sits at $55 to $69, and branded search for the eight largest agencies fell by similar amounts, which indicates a shift in where buyers research, not the disappearance of buying.

How many people search for a crypto PR agency each month? About 390 in the United States for crypto pr agency, and 320 for crypto marketing agency, as of 3 August 2026. The entire crypto-specific press-release keyword cluster is roughly 1,560 US searches a month against 75,880 for the generic newswire market.

Why is cost per click rising while search volume falls? Because the remaining searches are later-stage. Advertisers pay $55.69 for a crypto pr agency click and $69.40 for crypto marketing agency, the highest in the category, on a few hundred searches a month. That price is only rational if those clicks convert.

Where do crypto companies research PR agencies now, if not Google? Three places, on this measurement: generated AI answers, which appeared on 25 of the 28 commercial queries captured; third-party listicles and Reddit threads, which those answers cite; and directory profiles. Head-to-head comparison queries have no recorded search volume at all, which means that comparison is happening off the search box.

Does low search volume mean crypto PR is not worth doing? No. It means search volume is the wrong instrument for measuring it. Keyword difficulty on the category head term is 11, and cost per click is $55.69. Visibility in this category is unusually cheap to earn; there is simply very little of it to earn through search alone.

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