On 28 August 2026 we pulled keyword data for the single word "nearshoring" in two markets, Mexico and the United States, from the same Google Ads account on the same day. We expected a difference. We did not expect the shape of it.
Mexico searches the word far more often. The United States pays vastly more for it. Those two facts, read together, explain a specific and expensive mistake we keep seeing in industrial marketing budgets, and they point at where the money actually is on each side of the border.
How many people search for "nearshoring" in Mexico versus the United States?
Mexico shows roughly 12,100 monthly searches for "nearshoring" against roughly 1,900 in the United States, about 6.4 times more volume in the smaller economy. But the top-of-page bid range tells the opposite story: 0.09 to 1.91 Mexican pesos in Mexico, against 110.68 to 658.11 Mexican pesos in the United States. Comparing the high end of each range, the same word costs about 345 times more in the US auction.
Three things about that measurement, before anyone builds a plan on it:
- The bids are reported in pesos, both of them. The account is denominated in Mexican pesos, so the US figures are already converted. That is why we compare them as a ratio: 345 to 1 is currency-independent. If you want a rough dollar figure, the US high bid is around $35 USD and the Mexican high bid is around $0.10 USD at roughly 18.5 pesos to the dollar, but that conversion is ours, not Google's.
- Search volumes are buckets, not counts. Keyword Planner reports volume on a fixed ladder of values. Two keywords showing the same number are in the same bucket, not confirmed to be equal, and bucket figures should never be added together to estimate a market.
- A bid range is not a price anyone paid. It is Google's estimate of what it takes to reach the top of the page. It is a proxy for how much commercial competition exists, which is exactly what makes it useful here.
Why is the same word worth 345 times more in one market?
Because search volume and bid price measure two different human beings. Volume measures how many people are curious. Bid price measures how many advertisers believe the person typing that word controls a budget.
In Mexico, "nearshoring" is a national news story. It is in the newspapers, in political speeches, in university lectures, in LinkedIn commentary. Most of the 12,100 people typing it are informing themselves about a phenomenon happening to their country. Very few of them are about to sign a contract.
In the United States, the same word is mostly typed by someone with a supply chain problem and the authority to spend money solving it. There are fewer of them, and law firms, consultancies, logistics providers, industrial real estate developers and site-selection advisors are all bidding for the same handful of clicks. Scarcity plus budget produces a $35 auction. Abundance plus curiosity produces a ten-cent one.
The expensive mistake this creates
A cheap click looks like a win in every dashboard ever built. A team running Spanish-language campaigns on "nearshoring" in Mexico will report an outstanding cost per click, healthy traffic, and a cost per lead that beats every other channel. Six months later nobody can point to a single deal.
The traffic was real. The intent was not. The 345x gap is the market telling you, in the only language an auction speaks, that the two populations are not the same population. Buying the cheap side and reporting on cost efficiency is how a channel gets praised for two quarters and cancelled in the third.
The inverse error is just as common: a supplier concludes that Mexico has no demand because the keyword is worthless. That is also wrong. Mexican demand is enormous. It just does not live in the strategy vocabulary.
Where the Mexican demand actually lives
We measured the same market on the same day for the words the operators use rather than the words the analysts use. Monthly search volume in Mexico:
- canacintra: 22,200, with a competition score of 2 out of 100. We wrote a separate piece on what that institution is and why that number matters.
- cadena de suministro (supply chain): 14,800.
- automatizacion (automation): 12,100.
- maquiladora: 9,900. mantenimiento industrial (industrial maintenance): 9,900.
- agencia de marketing industrial (industrial marketing agency): 90. agencia de marketing b2b: 40.
That last line is us publishing an inconvenient number about our own category. The word "canacintra" alone carries roughly 247 times the search volume of "agencia de marketing industrial." Nobody in Mexico goes looking for an industrial marketing agency. They go looking for their chamber of commerce, their supply chain, their maintenance contract, and their automation project. If you want to be found by a Mexican industrial buyer, you have to be useful in the vocabulary he already uses, because the vocabulary that describes what you sell has essentially no traffic.
What should you actually do with this?
- Decide which side of the transaction you sell to, and stop straddling. If your customer is the company relocating production, your money is in English, in the US and European auctions, and it is expensive. If your customer is the Mexican plant receiving the work, your money is in Spanish operating vocabulary and it is nearly free.
- Never judge a market by cost per click alone. A low cost per click in a high-volume, low-bid market is usually the market pricing low intent correctly. Judge by qualified conversations, and be willing to pay 345 times more per click for the population that can sign.
- Use the cheap side for organic, not for paid. Twelve thousand curious monthly searchers are worth very little as clicks you buy and quite a lot as an audience you earn. Publishing genuinely useful material against that vocabulary costs the same regardless of the auction price.
- Re-measure before you commit budget. These are figures from one account on one day for one keyword. They are a snapshot, they are directional, and they will move. The method is what transfers, not the numbers.
Frequently asked questions
How many people search for nearshoring in Mexico? About 12,100 per month, measured 28 August 2026, against roughly 1,900 per month in the United States. Volume figures come from Google Keyword Planner and are reported in fixed buckets rather than exact counts.
Why do US advertisers bid so much more on nearshoring? Because in the US the searcher is usually a decision-maker with a supply chain budget, and consultancies, law firms, logistics providers and industrial real estate developers compete for a small pool of those clicks. In Mexico the same word is largely a news and education topic, so the auction prices it as low commercial intent.
Does low search volume mean a market is not worth entering? No. Low volume with a high bid signals a small, valuable, contested audience. High volume with a near-zero bid signals a large, curious, non-buying audience. Both can be worth entering, but they require completely different tactics and completely different success metrics.
What do Mexican industrial buyers actually search for? Operating vocabulary, not strategy vocabulary. Measured in Mexico on 28 August 2026: canacintra 22,200 monthly searches, cadena de suministro 14,800, automatizacion 12,100, maquiladora 9,900, mantenimiento industrial 9,900, against agencia de marketing industrial at 90 and agencia de marketing b2b at 40.
The bottom line
The same word, on the same day, in two neighbouring markets: six times the interest on one side, three hundred and forty-five times the price on the other. Nothing about that is a contradiction. It is two different people typing the same letters, and an auction that already knows which one has a budget. Decide which one you sell to before you decide what to spend. If you want us to run this measurement on your own category across Mexico, the United States and Europe, tell us what you sell.
