AI and Automation Search Trends in Canada, 2026: What Businesses Are Looking For

Summary

Canadian Google searches for AI and automation climbed through the spring of 2026; then, in the week of July 12, Google Trends interest in every AI term we tracked fell by about half and stayed down into October. Comparing March to August 2026 with the six months before, the fastest-growing themes were private and open-source AI (+698%), AI assistants (+378%), AI search tools (+221%) and AI infrastructure (+214%), while AI agents as a broad topic were flat (+3%) and voice and receptionist AI fell 17%. Open-source agents were the breakout topic of the year: searches for "openclaw" reached 165,000 in February 2026, and "hermes agent" went from an average of 23 searches a month to 18,133. Buyers also got more specific, with searches for "ai agents for business" roughly doubling, from 45 to 93 a month, at an estimated C$65.76 per click.

What happened to AI searches in July 2026?

Searches jumped in February, stayed high through the spring and peaked in May, then fell hard. Our weekly Google Trends check for Canada shows interest in every AI term we tracked dropping by about 50% in the week of July 12, 2026. It was still at that lower level in the week of October 5, the last week we checked.

The monthly estimates show the same break, slightly blurred because a mid-July drop only shows in full in August. "ai assistant" went from 74,000 searches in June to 27,100 in July and 22,200 in August. Of the 554 non-brand terms, 282 were lower in August than in June, 133 were higher and 139 didn't change. August was the second-lowest month of the twelve, above only December 2025.

One supplementary row in the keyword file kept climbing through July. Searches for "ai mode", the name of Google's own AI search feature, grew from 40,500 in September 2025 to 301,000 in June 2026 and 368,000 in both July and August.

July and August sit inside the March-to-August window, so every six-month comparison on this page understates how high interest ran in the spring.

How big was the open-source agent wave?

Open-source, self-hosted agents were the standout new topic of 2026. These are agent frameworks you install on your own computer or server; they connect to a language model and can act on that machine, for example by running commands or reading files. The named products below are brand terms and supplementary rows in the keyword file, so they sit outside the 554-term totals.

• OpenClaw: "openclaw" sat at 10 searches a month in late 2025, hit 165,000 in February 2026, then fell every month to 9,900 in August. The burst lands in the earlier half-year, so its six-month change is only +28% (34,986 to 44,783).
• Hermes Agent: "hermes agent" had 10 searches a month until January 2026, then peaked at 27,100 in May. Its average went from 23 to 18,133.
• Agent Zero: "agent zero" rose from 320 searches in September 2025 to 1,900 in August 2026 (average 677 to 1,303).
• Generic terms: "open source ai platform" rose from an average of 17 a month to 3,438, and "open source ai coding agent" from 23 to 1,575. "open source ai assistant" went from 22 to 1,312, mostly on one month: 6,600 searches in June.
• The steady base: "open source ai models" rose 105% (253 to 520) and "open source ai" 53% (633 to 970), with no one-month spikes.

The shapes differ: OpenClaw had one enormous burst and faded, Hermes Agent held a high level for months, and the generic terms climbed steadily. Interest in running AI yourself outlasted any single news cycle.

Which AI and automation searches are falling?

Comparing March to August 2026 with the six months before:

• "virtual receptionist": 630 to 152 a month (-76%)
• "ai employee": 367 to 163 (-55%)
• "ai visibility tools": 115 to 58 (-49%), mostly because September 2025 had 480
• "robotic process automation": 807 to 523 (-35%)
• "marketing automation": 570 to 368 (-35%)
• "generative engine optimization": 680 to 508 (-25%)
• "ai for business": 913 to 692 (-24%)

From September 2025 to August 2026, monthly searches for "n8n" dropped 63% (49,500 to 18,100), "agentic ai" 45% (12,100 to 6,600) and "zapier" 33% (27,100 to 18,100). Their six-month falls are smaller: -38%, -18% and -13%.

Several of these falls look like changes in wording more than changes in need. "virtual receptionist" lost three-quarters of its searches while "ai receptionist for small business" rose 55%. "robotic process automation" fell, yet "rpa software" doubled from a smaller base (353 to 730). People still want the work done. They describe it differently.

How did we collect and analyse the data?

Change is the difference between the two six-month averages as a share of the earlier one, rounded to a whole percent. Theme figures add up the monthly estimates of every term in the theme, then average each six-month period. "Summed searches" does the same for all 554 non-brand core terms (set = core, is_brand_name = no).

Limitations

• Estimates, not counts. Google reports volumes in rounded steps (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 90, 110 and so on). A term that moves from 10 to 20 doubles on paper, so big percentages on small bases need care.
• One-month spikes. 54 of the 554 non-brand terms are flagged in the one_month_spike column. "ai design assistant", for example, had 27,100 searches in April 2026 and never more than 40 outside April and May.
• Close variants share numbers. Google often gives near-identical phrases the same estimate, such as "ai consultant" and "ai consulting". Theme totals and summed totals count each phrase, so read them as an index of interest, not a head count.
• Canada and English only. French-language searches are not included, which matters most for Quebec.
• Brand names. The 554 terms exclude brand names. The core set in the keyword file also holds 32 brand terms for reference (is_brand_name = yes); none of them are in any total on this page.
• Supplementary rows. "openclaw", "hermes agent", "agent zero", "open source ai coding agent", "ai coding agent", "ai automation near me", "ai mode", "n8n", "agentic ai" and "zapier" are supplementary rows in the keyword file (set = supplementary), pulled 2026-10-06. Six fell outside the core set only because DataForSEO's language detector tagged them as non-English; why_supplementary gives each reason. They are in no total or theme. "openclaw" has no November 2025 figure, so its first average covers five months.
• Trends is relative. Google Trends gives a 0 to 100 index, not volumes. We used it only to check direction and timing, week by week, through October 5.
• Interest is not adoption. This data shows what people look up, not what they buy or use.