A dental Google Ads account works when it is built around the treatments the practice wants to grow, kept inside the rules that govern dental advertising, and measured on patients rather than clicks. Below is how patients search, how I would structure the account, which rules apply to every ad, and where dental budgets most often leak.
How people look for a dentist on Google
Dental searches fall into a few groups, and each behaves differently once it becomes a paid click.
- Something has gone wrong. “Emergency dentist”, “broken tooth”, “dentist open today”. The searcher is nearly always on a phone, often in pain, and will ring the first practice that can see them. These clicks are only worth buying while someone is there to pick up.
- Looking for a new practice. “Private dentist near me”, “dentist taking new patients”. People who have moved house or lost their NHS place. Some will book a private check-up; plenty are hoping for NHS care a private practice cannot give them.
- Weighing up a treatment. “Dental implants cost”, “Invisalign near me”, “composite bonding”. These patients research for weeks, compare fees and finance, and often attend more than one consultation. A single case can be worth more than years of check-ups, so this is usually where most of the budget belongs.
- Checking your name. Someone recommended to you, searching for the practice or a particular dentist before they call.
A sound dental account keeps these groups apart, because the bid, the hours, the wording and the page each one lands on are all different.
What changes in Google Ads for a dental practice
A campaign for each treatment you want to grow
I build campaigns around the treatments with chair time to fill, not around dentistry as a whole. Implants, aligners and cosmetic work each get their own campaign and budget, so a busy month for one cannot starve the others, and you can see what an implant consultation costs separately from a new hygiene patient. Each one starts as a Google search campaign, because a patient who types a treatment into Google has already told you what they want.
Travel distance and surgery hours
How far a patient will travel depends on what they are buying. Someone booking a scale and polish wants a practice near home or work; someone spending several thousand pounds on implants may cross London for the right clinician. I set location targeting separately for each campaign and limit it to people who are actually in, or regularly in, that area rather than those who have merely shown an interest in it. Emergency ads run only while reception is staffed. A call from an advert that nobody answers is a paid click handed to the next practice on the list.
Keywords and the searches to keep out
Dental terms pull in a lot of searches a private practice cannot serve: NHS-only queries when you are not taking NHS patients, jobs and training (“dental nurse jobs”, “hygienist course”), dental schools, home whitening kits and treatment abroad. A negative keyword list covering these goes in before launch, and I add to it every week from the search terms report. If you are a mixed practice with NHS places open, those searches get a campaign of their own rather than being blocked.
The advertising rules
Three sets of rules apply to a dental ad, and Google enforces only one of them.
- GDC guidance on advertising. Ads must be accurate and must not mislead. “Specialist” may only describe a dentist on one of the GDC’s specialist lists, and there is no list for implants or cosmetic dentistry. That rules out headlines such as “implant specialists” for most practices, even though Google will usually approve them.
- The CAP Code, section 12. A health claim needs evidence the practice already holds before the ad runs, so “pain-free”, “permanent” and “guaranteed” normally come out. Prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public, which means botulinum toxin is never named in an ad, a keyword or the page an ad sends people to.
- Google’s own policies. Routine dental treatment is not a restricted category in the way prescription drugs are, but Google’s personalised advertising policy limits how health-related interests can be used to target people. Before I build a remarketing list from visitors to a treatment page, I check that the policy allows it.
Prices and finance carry rules of their own. A “from” price in an ad has to be one a fair share of patients actually pay, and the same figure must appear on the landing page. Mentioning interest-free or monthly payments turns the ad into a consumer credit promotion under FCA rules, so I ask the practice’s finance provider to approve that wording before it goes live.
Ad assets and landing pages
Most dental enquiries still arrive by phone, so every campaign carries a call asset shown during surgery hours, plus a location asset linked to the practice’s Google Business Profile so the address and distance can appear with the ad. Sitelinks point to clinician profiles, the fee list and finance.
Each treatment campaign sends people to a page about that treatment, never the home page. That page needs what a patient is comparing: who carries out the treatment, with their GDC registration number; what happens at each appointment; the fee or a “from” price; finance terms; and an obvious way to book a consultation. If the current site cannot do that, I build landing pages for paid campaigns that are checked against the same rules as the ads.
Tracking what becomes a patient
A click is not a patient, and neither is a form fill. I track calls from the ads, calls from the website and booking requests, and test each one before launch. If the practice books online through a system on another domain, that needs setting up properly or the bookings disappear from the reports. Once enough data exists, I send back which enquiries became consultations and accepted treatment plans using offline conversion imports, so Google’s bidding learns from patients rather than from enquiries.
Patient information needs care at this step. Anything that reveals a treatment is health data under UK GDPR, so I keep what goes back to Google to the minimum the bidding needs and agree it with whoever handles data protection at the practice. Tracking also has to respect each visitor’s cookie choice, as it should on any UK site.
A typical account structure
| Campaign | What it covers | How I run it |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Searches for the practice and its dentists | Small budget, so directories and competitors bidding on your name do not take those enquiries cheaply |
| Emergency | Toothache, broken teeth, same-day appointments | Surgery hours only, calls as the main conversion, tight radius |
| New patients | Private check-ups, hygiene, “dentist near me” | Local radius, NHS terms excluded unless you have places |
| Implants | Single implants, bridges on implants, full-arch work | Wider radius, fee and finance on the page, longest wait between click and treatment |
| Orthodontics | Clear aligners and adult braces | Aligner brand names in ad text checked against the brand owner’s trademark terms first |
| Cosmetic | Whitening, bonding, veneers | Before-and-after claims checked, prices shown |
A smaller practice rarely needs all six at once. I usually start with brand, emergency if reception can take the calls, and the one treatment with the most chair time to fill, then add others once tracking is producing reliable numbers. I would hold off on Performance Max until the account has months of clean conversion data, because it decides for itself where the ads appear and which searches they match, and that is harder to keep inside dental advertising rules.
Common mistakes in dental Google Ads accounts
- Every treatment in one campaign. The budget drifts to cheap check-up clicks and the implant searches, where the value is, barely show.
- Broad match with no exclusions. Ads appearing for “NHS dentist”, “dental nurse salary” and “veneers in Turkey price”.
- “Specialist” in headlines. Google approves it; the GDC’s guidance does not allow it.
- Ads pointing at the home page. The patient searched for aligners and has to hunt for them.
- The wrong things counted as conversions. Page views or clicks on a “Contact” button recorded as results, so the bidding learns to find people who click rather than people who book.
- Ads running to an empty reception. Lunchtimes, evenings and Saturdays with the phones unattended and the budget still spending.
Where Google Ads sits alongside other channels
Paid search can bring enquiries from the week it launches, but every click costs money for as long as it runs. SEO for dental practices builds treatment pages that earn visits without a click cost, and the search terms report from Google Ads shows exactly which phrases those pages should answer. Treatments people consider for months, such as aligners and whitening, can also suit Facebook and Instagram ads for dentists, which reach people before they have searched. If your practice sits inside a clinic that also offers medical treatments, my page on Google Ads for private clinics covers the extra rules that apply there.
Next step
Tell me which treatments you most want to grow, roughly what a patient for each is worth to the practice, and whether you already run Google Ads. If you do, I will look through the account and tell you where I think the budget is going and what I would change first. Ongoing work runs as monthly PPC management, reported on new patient enquiries and treatment starts rather than clicks. Book a call about your practice to get started.