Google Ads for dentists: CPCs, structure and minimum budget (an enquiry costs £101 in Bristol, £164 in Leeds)

Google Ads for dentists works when the campaign is local and buys "dentist + town" searches, emergencies and high-value treatments: a click on "dentist manchester" costs £6.37, one on "dentist leeds" £8.22, one on "dental implants" £6.55 (DataForSEO, Google Ads UK, September 2026, converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242). At a 5% conversion rate, one enquiry every twenty clicks, an appointment request from Google Ads in Manchester costs around £127.

That's the number to start from before you open an account.

And if the practice isn't in Manchester?

The CPC (cost per click) changes, the logic doesn't: in Bristol a click costs £5.05, in Leeds £8.22, and an enquiry ranges from £101 to £164.

The problem is that many dental accounts never get to do that sum. What we find most often:

• the click going to the home page;
• Performance Max switched on from day one;
• no negative keywords, so the account pays for "free dentist" and "nhs dentist near me";
• remarketing on the implants page, which Google's health policy doesn't allow.

Display, national campaigns, promoted articles: all budget burnt on people who will never book at your practice.

So why listen to us?

Because we've found, and fixed, the same measurement mistakes in other sectors. At Valore Solare the account counted 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks. With the tracking rebuilt came 1,506 real enquiries at €70.78 each, 40% less than in the first quarter.

And in dentistry we work with a company whose account is split by region: we explain why further down.

In this guide:

• measured CPCs, city by city and treatment by treatment;
• what the chains actually buy (spoiler: a job ad);
• the account structure in four campaigns, with the negatives to load before going live;
• what the GDC, the ASA and Google's policies say about prices, offers and remarketing;
• the minimum budget, worked out on real numbers.

The organic side is in the companion article on SEO for dentists.

Let's start with costs.

What a click costs in dentistry (from £5.05 in Bristol to £17.91 for London implants)

In dentistry CPCs fall into two clear bands: commercial searches with a town or a treatment sit between £4 and £8 a click, with London implants an outlier at almost £18, while informational searches such as "toothache" (14,800 searches a month) cost £1.77. Advertisers have already voted with their wallets on what brings in patients.

Keyword	Searches/month	Average CPC	Top of page bid (high)
dentist near me	246,000	£3.97	£5.44
nhs dentist near me	90,500	£2.01	£2.17
teeth whitening	60,500	£2.58	£2.68
dental implants	22,200	£6.55	£7.76
dental implants cost	9,900	£4.20	£4.04
teeth cleaning	5,400	£2.40	£4.12
hygienist near me	4,400	£3.90	£4.98
dentist edinburgh	4,400	£6.61	£7.87
dentist liverpool	3,600	£5.61	£7.46
dentist manchester	2,900	£6.37	£6.94
dentist sheffield	2,900	£7.76	£7.56
dentist birmingham	2,400	£5.60	£6.52
dental implants london	2,400	£17.91	£16.88
dentist leeds	1,900	£8.22	£9.29
dentist bristol	1,900	£5.05	£6.57
dentist open sunday	720	£6.07	£6.42
cheap dentist	320	£5.33	£4.74
dentist open saturday	260	£5.58	£5.61

Three things to read.

First: "dentist near me" has 246,000 searches a month, about 85 times "dentist manchester", and it costs less.

How do you buy it if it contains no town?

With location targeting, not with the ad text.

Second: "cheap dentist" costs £5.33, more than "dentist near me". Price shoppers are contested. And they often don't book.

Third: "nhs dentist near me" has 90,500 searches at £2.01. A large share of UK demand is people looking for an NHS place: worth buying only if you're actually taking on new NHS patients.

One limit of the data: Google Ads returned no volume or CPC for "dentist london", "emergency dentist", "emergency dentist near me", "private dentist near me" and "invisalign cost". Campaigns still reach those searches, but you can't know in advance what they're worth.

Recommended reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to benchmark CPCs and conversion rates.

Which campaign to open first (one radius-targeted Search campaign, nothing else)

A dental practice's first campaign is one Search campaign on a radius of 3 to 10 miles around the practice (more in rural areas, less in central London or Manchester), and nothing else. Not Performance Max, not Display, not the "Smart" campaigns Google suggests when you open the account.

Why not Performance Max?

Because it needs conversions to learn, and a single practice starts with zero data.

Switched on from day one, it optimises for phone-number clicks and page views. And reports that all is well.

At Contesini Consulenze, two branches in the province of Mantua, Italy, in another local sector, we added it only after Search had collected real conversions: 299 leads in seven months at €7.20 each, 68% of them workable.

In dentistry CPCs are higher. The order of the steps doesn't change.

One detail that makes a difference: with the Google Business Profile linked to the account, Search shows the location asset with address and map. Where the biggest search is "near me", that's the asset that counts most.

Recommended reading: when Google Ads makes sense.

How to structure a practice's account (four campaigns, four different CPCs)

A dental practice's Google Ads account should be split into four campaigns, each with its own budget, because each has a different CPC and a different value per patient.

• Local generic: "dentist", "dental practice", "dentist near me", "dentist + town/area". The campaign with the most volume and the most predictable CPC (£5.05 to £8.22 depending on the city).
• Emergencies and opening hours: "emergency dentist", "dentist open saturday", "dentist open sunday", "toothache", "abscess". Run only during the hours when someone answers the phone, with the call asset.
• High-value treatments: implants, clear aligners, veneers, dentures. High CPC ("dental implants" £6.55, £17.91 in London), but the NHS website says implants are usually only available privately, so almost every implant enquiry is a private patient.
• Hygiene: "teeth cleaning" (5,400 searches, £2.40), "hygienist near me" (4,400, £3.90), whitening. Low value, but it's the door through which a new patient comes in.

Match types and negatives

Phrase for towns and treatments, exact for emergencies.

Broad match comes later, with at least 30 conversions a month and an automated bid strategy to lean on.

And if you switch it on from day one?

It's the quickest way to buy "how to become a dentist" and "dentist salary".

Write the negatives before you go live:

• free, NHS (if you're not taking NHS patients), hospital;
• course, degree, jobs, salary, training;
• reviews;
• the names of the chains (mydentist, Bupa Dental Care), if you don't want to pay for people looking for them.

The "People also ask" box for "dentist manchester" shows why: "How can I find an NHS dentist in Manchester?", "How much does it cost to see a dentist in the UK?".

Real searches. £6 clicks that don't turn into private patients.

Keep areas separate

A dental company we work with in Italy has its account split by region, with separate budgets: different regions have different CPCs and response rates, and a single budget would have concentrated spend where clicks cost most.

The UK spread is just as wide, from £5.05 in Bristol to £8.22 in Leeds. For a single practice the same applies between the campaign with the town name in the text and the one targeting a radius around the practice: they convert differently and should be kept separate.

Recommended reading: how to do keyword research and why long-tail keywords convert better.

What the chains actually buy (mydentist's only detected paid keyword is a job ad)

The dental chains don't flood Google Ads the way people think: for mydentist, DataForSEO's UK database detects a single paid keyword, and it's a recruitment ad. For Bupa's dental pages it detects none.

So the chains don't buy Google Ads?

Not much, at least in the sample:

• mydentist: 1 paid keyword, "dental nurse trainee jobs birmingham" (140 searches, £0.91), with sitelinks for student dental nurses and self-employed dentist jobs;
• Bupa's dental pages: none;
• on the live SERP for "dentist manchester", crawled from Manchester on 26 September 2026: no ads at all.

The limit of the data: DataForSEO samples SERPs and underestimates local radius campaigns, which a crawler outside the target area doesn't see. Real chain spend is certainly higher than the sample shows. What it shows reliably is the strategy, not the amount.

And what's the strategy?

The chains win on the free placements:

• mydentist Stevenson Square sits in the local pack with 480 reviews;
• Bupa Dental Care Manchester is the first organic result;
• each practice has its own page, with address, opening hours and phone number, that the Google Business Profile links to directly.

That's the part to copy: one page per location that answers the four things a patient wants to know before calling. Price, availability, how to pay, where you are.

Where to send the click (never the home page)

The click from a dental campaign should go to a landing page for the treatment, never to the home page (how to build treatment pages is in our guide to the dental practice website). The landing page has six elements, in the order the patient looks for them:

1. treatment and town in the headline;
2. a price range, with a date;
3. Google reviews with the count (in Manchester, The Vallance Dental Centre has 1,300, City Centre Dental & Implant Clinic 509);
4. a click-to-call phone number;
5. opening hours;
6. the map.

The form comes after, and asks for three fields.

Prices yes, fake specialist titles no

Many practices get stuck on price.

Can you put it in an ad?

Yes, if it's true and you can prove it. In the UK, the GDC's Guidance on advertising asks for your GDC registration number to be included, and bars dentists who are not on a GDC specialist list from titles that imply specialist status, such as "Orthodontist" or "Periodontist". The ASA enforces the CAP Code on accuracy, and the code doesn't allow prescription-only medicines such as botulinum toxin to be advertised to the public. Offers such as a free initial consultation are acceptable provided the terms and conditions are clear (Dentistry, August 2025).

In practice, for an ad:

• "Dental implants in Manchester from £X": fine, if it's true and you can prove it;
• "Orthodontist in Leeds": NO, unless you're on the specialist list;
• "Botox from £99": NO, whoever administers it.

The Google policies that apply to a dentist

Official texts checked in September 2026.

The Healthcare and medicines policy doesn't restrict dental services: the restrictions requiring certification cover prescription drugs, online pharmacies, addiction services and health insurance. It prohibits the promotion of experimental or speculative treatments.

The one that matters most is Health in personalized advertising. For sensitive health content, including invasive medical procedures, cosmetic surgery and injections, you can't use advertiser-curated audiences (remarketing lists, Customer Match, similar segments). Google's predefined segments are still allowed.

And dentistry?

The policy doesn't name it. But implant dentistry and oral surgery are invasive procedures.

So remarketing to visitors of the implants page, which in other sectors is the first thing we switch on, can't be done here. Anyone who sets it up finds their ads limited without understanding why.

Recommended reading: how to build a landing page that ranks and converts.

What to count as a conversion (15,267 "conversions" on 5,467 clicks are not patients)

In a dental practice's Google Ads account there are three conversions and nothing else: a call from the ad or the site lasting more than 30 to 60 seconds, a submitted form, a completed booking. A click on the phone number is an intention, and so is a view of the contact page.

It's the most expensive mistake we find in accounts.

• At Valore Solare the account counted 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks: technical events, and the automated bidding was optimising for them.
• At Sunscape there were 1,487 conversions at €0.61. Not one of them was an enquiry.

And once it was fixed?

With the tracking rebuilt, Valore Solare moved to 1,506 real enquiries in 11 months at €70.78 each, 40% less than in the first quarter.

Dentistry adds a complication: many practices take bookings through a third-party online booking platform, and the platform's widget often doesn't pass data to Google Ads.

You need a dedicated number with call tracking or your own form on the landing page. Without it, the account is working blind.

Recommended reading: how to set up Google Analytics to count real enquiries.

How much budget you need (£35 to £40 a day in a mid-sized city)

The sensible minimum Google Ads budget for a practice in a mid-sized UK city is £35 to £40 a day, £1,000 to £1,200 a month, for about 200 clicks and 10 enquiries. The calculation uses the CPCs in the table and a cautious conversion rate of 5%.

• Leeds: CPC £8.22, one enquiry every 20 clicks, so about £164 per enquiry. 10 enquiries a month need 200 clicks and £1,644.
• Manchester: CPC £6.37, about £127 per enquiry. 10 enquiries cost £1,274.
• Bristol or Birmingham: CPC £5.05 to £5.60, about £101 to £112 per enquiry. 10 enquiries cost £1,010 to £1,120.
• Weekend and emergencies: "dentist open sunday" costs £6.07, but it's reasonable to expect people searching for urgent care to call more often: if the rate rises to 10%, an enquiry costs about £61.

And with £10 a day?

In Leeds you buy around 36 clicks a month, which means one or two enquiries.

Too few to tell whether the campaign works. And too few to let automated bidding learn.

An honest note on the 5%: it's a cautious assumption taken from local campaigns in other sectors. The dental sample we can rely on is small, and we prefer the numbers to err on the low side.

And after the first months?

Cost comes down, if you work on the right things. At Macropix (B2B) cost per enquiry went from €94 in 2024 to €39.44 in 2025, thanks to negatives, landing pages and tracking. Not budget.

The first quarter buys data. The second makes it pay.

The mistakes we find in dentists' accounts (the 30-mile radius that buys Liverpool)

The mistakes in dentists' Google Ads accounts are almost always the same six, and none of them is technical: they're decisions made in a hurry when the account was opened.

• The click goes to the home page, where the patient has to hunt for prices and the phone number.
• No negatives: the account pays for "free dentist", "nhs dentist near me" and "dental nurse course".
• Performance Max on from day one, optimising for phone-number clicks and reporting hundreds of conversions.
• Campaign running 24 hours with the call asset, and nobody answering after 7pm or on Saturdays.
• Remarketing to visitors of the implants page, which breaches the health policy and limits the ads.
• Radius too wide: 30 miles around Manchester buys clicks from Liverpool for a city-centre practice.

The good news?

Each one can be fixed in an afternoon.

We find the same mistakes, with different CPCs, in the accounts of medical practices and clinics and of local SMEs.

Google Ads or SEO for a dental practice? (Deansgate Dental Studio ranks third, but it takes years)

For a dental practice Google Ads pays off straight away, SEO over time: on the "dentist manchester" SERP the top is a "Find results on" carousel of directories and platforms (mydentist, WhatClinic, Yell, Booksy, a Facebook video from NHS Greater Manchester), then a local pack with three practices holding 480 to 1,300 reviews, then organic results led by Bupa Dental Care and nhs.uk. When ads run, they sit above all of this, in a sector where organic is slow for a single location.

The sequence we recommend:

1. Google Business Profile and a prices page first, because the campaign needs them too;
2. Ads on emergencies, implants and "dentist + town" from the first month;
3. SEO on treatment + town pages in parallel, and less Ads wherever organic reaches page one.

Deansgate Dental Studio, an independent practice, ranks third organically for "dentist manchester", right behind Bupa and the NHS: it shows where you can get to. Most practices take years.

The full reasoning is in SEO for dentists and in SEO and Google Ads together.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start (with a week of phone calls at reception)

Not £10 a day, but £35 to £40.

Not the home page, but a landing page with price, reviews and phone number.

Not phone-number clicks, but calls, forms and bookings.

Not remarketing on implants, but a radius-targeted Search campaign with the negatives already loaded.

Now, two concrete things.

One: before opening the account, spend a week noting how many people call the practice and how many book an appointment. That ratio is your reception's conversion rate, and it's the number that multiplies everything else: at £127 per enquiry and a 50% booking rate a patient costs £254, at 70% about £181.

Two: set the budget with the CPC table and your town.

If you want us to look at an account that's already running or at the numbers for your area, book a strategy consultation: it's the work we do in Google Ads management for local businesses.

See you next time!