Small Business Trends and Stats 2022

Entertainment

314

Building Materials

Most of the sites belonging to small businesses were in the positive traffic territory. The average traffic growth across the board was 2900%.

365.42%

Consumer Goods

542.59%

Education Management

2

Online Media

To pinpoint some general trends around starting a new business, we looked at search volume for various searches that feature this desire—from “how to start a business” to “open business”.

Utilities

94%

37,622

What do people do, though, when they want to open a new business?

3210%

304%

1

Education Management

2,327

Furniture

3,080%

But what about searches around small business specifically?

147%

33,056

189%

Higher Education

The only exception here was in July 2020, when interest in opening up a business skyrocketed off the typical season—and this can be linked to what’s now called the pandemic effect.

Growth 2019

55,075

Food & Beverages

Building Materials

vending machine

Although impressive, this is not the biggest jump to date.

28,606

The “Etsy, cleaning, boutique” triad is present—fully or partially—across each state’s top 3. There are some exceptions, though:

• In exactly half the states, coffee shops also make it into the top 3 most searched small business categories.

• Montana and Vermont searchers also consider delivery services as a potential undertaking.

What Are Americans Concerned About When Thinking of Opening a Small Business? 

Average Facebook posts 2018

As per our findings, as of 2022, Online Media accounts have the highest posting frequency on both Twitter and Facebook. However, this doesn’t seem to have given their audience growth a push.

109.91%

274,140

6,627

176%

330.07%

When analyzing social media trends for small businesses, you’d expect to see the same leisure and entertainment brands getting the biggest audience growth numbers. 

Average Twitter posts 2022

This might imply that the social media audience spike of some small business categories can’t simply be tied to their advertising efforts. Or, they manage to pull off social media campaigns that bring a very targeted and relevant audience that stays and engages with their content. 

Are You Ready to Start a New Business?

Financial Services

Average Twitter audience 2018

But the market has space for everyone, only you have to know how to go about it.

power washing

17,212

Apparel & Fashion

45,581

Top 10 Fastest-Growing Small Business Site Categories (2017-2022)

The user interest growth pattern is consistent with what we saw above, but the pace of growth is much faster. appliance repair	Small Business Categories With the Fastest Twitter Audience Growth    104.76% 212% Median number of organic keywords where domain ranks in top 10 3,118 2,214 From 2018 to 2022, the number of searches for all things related to starting a small business spiked by 76%. Higher Education 63420% That’s why search volume stats can reveal what really matters to Americans when they are thinking of opening a small business. 19,497 As you can see, the actual growth in the number of small businesses and interest in starting them has indeed increased over the years. So Google searches often pre-empt the actual leap into the world of entrepreneurship. What Are the Hottest Small Business Types? 279% 934	676%
2,943	Information Technology	Indeed, the US economy has always been known for its reliance on smaller enterprises: “Small business is the backbone of our economy”—almost no US president has gone a term without reciting this phrase. While it’s individual small businesses and their teams that are behind the successes, we can still track some category-specific patterns. Small business categories with the biggest audience growth  We took a closer look at marketing-related searches to evaluate whether small businesses are all that interested in researching ways to promote their brands. Consumer Goods	Publishing	3,518
Small Business Categories With the Biggest Facebook Activity Growth    Education Management 128.22% Insights into each channel’s engagement stats can shed some light on this. 185,376 17,600% Up to now, we’ve been looking at the patterns on a national level.  Insurance Entertainment 178% Law & Government If you are curious and impatient to launch a new small venture, we hope this study helped to assess the digital landscape of all things small business. 565 Change lash 1896% 5,984 69,237 1239% If we look at overall patterns across site categories, on average, small business domains we analyzed have the top organic rankings for approximately 8,000 keywords.  Which Small Business Category Gets the Biggest Social Media Traction? 40,207 25,122 623 52 Average monthly values So we used our keyword and more particularly search volume intel to explore some trends of interest within the realm of small business and: See whether Americans’ interest in small business ventures has seen some YoY shifts and whether it’s subject to any patterns; Understand which business types spike more curiosity; Explore any local (state-by-state) specifics. Just keep in mind that: The competition is ramping up as more and more people get curious about opening up a small business. More and more small businesses are getting savvy about online marketing—interest in marketing services is on the rise, and so is the expertise as some manage to see their traffic grow tenfold.  Starting a business means that you’ll face a lot of challenges and concerns. And what does that imply? Online Education 206 airbnb 1,839 Twitter comes with similar patterns, only growth figures are more modest. 2	13	531	79%
Average Facebook audience 2022	12%
Financial Services	14,816	Sites within the leisure and entertainment spheres have seen the biggest traffic surge.  Higher Education	10,116
20	10,909	In fact, searches surrounding the financial side of running a small business saw the biggest increase in interest over the past 4 years: “Small business stimulus” and “small business grants Ohio” keywords saw a 2,500% and 2,000% increase in searches, respectively.  Even such high-volume searches as “small business grants” saw triple-digit YoY growth. 264	This growth trend can either point to user interest and demand patterns, or to the fact that these sites generally invest more in their online visibility. Any organic search strategy success? 2237%
Almost one-fifth of all entrepreneurs-to-be want to open a boutique.  12,165	1,585	29	Growth 2020	Change
100,686	Change
Small Business Categories With the Fastest Facebook Audience Growth    Average Facebook audience 2018 278% Keyword Category While fewer people now want to open an online business—ever since the pandemic started to slow down, the searches have fallen—having a solid online presence is an absolute must, regardless of how small the business is. 0 Keyword It seems, however, that the inclination to start a new venture is subject to strong ‘seasonality’—the majority of the searches occur in January and March. 440,364 You may think that it’s all because organic strategies aren’t working so well on either Facebook or Twitter.  Food & Beverages Growth 2022 8,480% Building Materials Entertainment 8 E-learning 673 146,011 Media Production Furniture Real Estate Consumer Goods Gambling & Casinos 3 In fact, in most cases, we’ve seen posting frequency decrease, and by significant margins: On Facebook, 60% of the categories we analyzed reduced the number of their posts by an average of 50%. On Twitter, these numbers are even higher: around 75% of the small business categories started publishing 65% (on average) fewer posts. Small business categories with the biggest spikes in social media engagement 59.72% Any Local Nuances? 2,145
1,323%
Looking at the number of keywords small business sites rank for can reveal whether traffic growth has to do with a successful organic search strategy. 137%
42	The second-biggest concern for potential entrepreneurs is administration. Small business accountants or accounting software have witnessed growth in interest—we see a triple-digit increase here as well. Is Marketing At All a Matter of Concern for Small Businesses? laundromat	11,069	Consumer Goods	43,525	333,375	3,340	medical courier	172.48%
Average Twitter likes + replies + retweets 2018	sticker	Stats across regions, however, can vary a lot, so we took a more granular look at the most popular small business categories within each US state. Marketing & Advertising	Right, you’ll once again turn to Google in search of answers. 1,262	This might imply that more and more small businesses are now getting concerned about their digital presence, looking up ways to manage their online visibility.  Which Small Businesses Manage to Succeed Online? 517	264,689	16,350	Publishing	12	28,364	Higher Education	65%
Queries related to “starting a boutique” have always had the largest share of all small business related searches, but the rest of the top three kept changing over time: 387	The table below shows which small business types saw the biggest growth in Google searches related to starting a new venture: 224 As you can see, the top 10 list here doesn’t coincide with that of the fastest-growing site categories by traffic, which means that ranking for a high number of keywords might not directly lead to traffic growth. tanning Online Media 274 138% If small business is the backbone of the US economy, the right marketing strategy is the backbone of your small business’ success.  منبع Music Consumer Goods Veterinary 37,994 From what we’ve noticed, this is not the case.  2,175 -1% Small business categories with the most social media activity  92,563	1064%

21%

603%

51,162

41%

2724%

38

Average Twitter audience 2022

Armed with data we pulled from our clients’ sites (insights taken from various Semrush tools), we also managed to track some general success patterns. We analyzed everything from their traffic growth trends to organic and social media performance over time—all to see which small business categories manage to do better online.

Exploring searches around opening a business

Change

Capitalizing on hobbies is also popular—starting an Etsy business looks attractive to almost one-fifth of all the searchers.

Now, this could have to do with a greater social media activity across these accounts. Let’s take a look.

Average Facebook likes 2022

Organic search might not be responsible for positive traffic dynamics, so we also wanted to unwrap how things are going for small businesses on the social media front.

So, if you’re one of those 34,000 (monthly search volume) folks Googling “small business ideas”, the insights below can help you make a more informed decision.

Consumer Services

1,239

205%

lip gloss

397.62%

3,448

The “marketing ideas for small business” keyword—the most searched term within the category—gets around 1,200 monthly searches. This is much lower than all the administrative and operations-related terms.

Search volume stats reflect this.

0

You can see that engagement stats are consistent with audience growth across both social media networks. 

445

162.65%

3%

1,920%

1

1,540

247%

Real Estate

2,961

Change

1,075

1108%

298

301%