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 is the number to start from before you open an account.
Google Ads for dentists works when the campaign is local, buys "dentist + town" searches, emergencies and high-value treatments, and sends the click to a page with prices, reviews and a phone number. Everything else (Display, national campaigns, promoted articles) burns budget on people who will never book at your practice.
Below are the measured CPCs, what the chains actually buy, the account structure, Google's policies, UK advertising rules and the minimum budget worked out on real numbers. The organic side is in the companion article on SEO for dentists.
What a click costs in dentistry
Two clear price bands: commercial searches with a town or a treatment sit between £4 and £8 a click (London implants are an outlier at almost £18), 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 in the table. "Dentist near me" has 246,000 searches a month, about 85 times "dentist manchester", and it costs less: it contains no town, so you buy it with location targeting, not with the ad text. "Cheap dentist" costs £5.33, more than "dentist near me": price shoppers are contested, and they often do not book. And "nhs dentist near me" has 90,500 searches at £2.01: a large share of UK demand is people looking for an NHS place, which is worth buying only if you are 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 cannot know in advance what they are worth.
Recommended reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to benchmark CPCs and conversion rates.
Which campaign to open first
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.
Performance Max 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. On 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. In dentistry CPCs are higher, but the order of the steps does not change.
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 is the asset that counts most.
Recommended reading: when Google Ads makes sense.
How to structure a practice's account
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". This is 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 is the door through which a new patient comes in.
Match types: 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; switching it on from day one is the quickest way to buy "how to become a dentist" and "dentist salary".
Write the negatives before you go live: free, NHS (if you are not taking NHS patients), hospital, course, degree, jobs, salary, training, reviews, and the names of the chains (mydentist, Bupa Dental Care) if you do not 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 do not turn into private patients.
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
The common belief is that the chains flood Google Ads and make life impossible for an independent practice. The data says otherwise.
For mydentist, DataForSEO's UK database detects a single paid keyword, and it is a recruitment ad: "dental nurse trainee jobs birmingham" (140 searches, £0.91), with sitelinks for student dental nurses and self-employed dentist jobs. For Bupa's dental pages it detects none. On the live SERP for "dentist manchester", crawled from Manchester on 26 September 2026, there were no ads at all.
The limit of the data: DataForSEO samples SERPs and underestimates local radius campaigns, which a crawler outside the target area does not see. Real chain spend is certainly higher than what the sample shows; what it shows reliably is the strategy, not the amount.
And the strategy is clear from the same SERP: 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, and each practice has its own page, with address, opening hours and phone number, that the Google Business Profile links to directly. For an independent practice, that is 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 to the home page. The landing page has six elements, in the order the patient looks for them: treatment and town in the headline, a price range with a date, Google reviews with the count (in Manchester, The Vallance Dental Centre has 1,300, City Centre Dental & Implant Clinic 509), a click-to-call phone number, opening hours, the map. The form comes after, and asks for three fields.
Many practices get stuck on price. 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 does not 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). For an ad: "Dental implants in Manchester from £X" is fine if it is true and you can prove it; "Orthodontist in Leeds" is not, unless you are on the specialist list; "Botox from £99" is not, whoever administers it.
The Google policies that apply to a dentist
Official texts checked in September 2026. The Healthcare and medicines policy does not 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 cannot use advertiser-curated audiences (remarketing lists, Customer Match, similar segments); Google's predefined segments are still allowed. The policy does not name dentistry, but implant dentistry and oral surgery are invasive procedures: remarketing to visitors of the implants page, which in other sectors is the first thing we switch on, cannot 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
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 is the most expensive mistake we find in accounts. On 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. On Sunscape there were 1,487 conversions at €0.61, not one of them an enquiry. 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 does not 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
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 is reasonable to expect people searching for urgent care to call more often; if the rate rises to 10%, an enquiry costs about £61.
The sensible minimum budget for a practice in a mid-sized UK city is therefore £35 to £40 a day, £1,000 to £1,200 a month, for about 200 clicks and 10 enquiries. 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 or to let automated bidding learn. The 5% is 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.
For comparison, on Macropix (B2B) cost per enquiry went from €94 in 2024 to €39.44 in 2025, thanks to negatives, landing pages and tracking, not budget. In dentistry the expectation is the same: the first quarter buys data, the second makes it pay.
The mistakes we find in dentists' accounts
- 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.
None of them is a technical error. They are decisions made in a hurry when the account was opened, and 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?
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: that is why Ads pays off straight away in a sector where organic is slow for a single location.
The sequence we recommend: Google Business Profile and a prices page first, because the campaign needs them too; Ads on emergencies, implants and "dentist + town" from the first month; 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, which 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
How much does a patient from Google Ads cost a dentist?
With September 2026 UK CPCs and a 5% conversion rate, between about £101 in Bristol and £164 in Leeds per appointment request. If reception converts one in two, the cost per patient doubles: the calculation has to be made against the first visit and the average value of the treatment.
Can a dentist advertise on Google in the UK?
Yes. The GDC's guidance asks for your registration number and bars specialist titles unless you are on a GDC specialist list; the ASA enforces the CAP Code, which does not allow prescription-only medicines such as botulinum toxin to be advertised to the public. Google's policies do not restrict dental services, but they prohibit experimental treatments and personalised audiences on sensitive health content.
Can I run remarketing to visitors of the practice website?
Not with audiences you create yourself (visitor lists, Customer Match) when the ad or landing page is about invasive procedures such as implants and oral surgery: the Health in personalized advertising policy forbids it. Google's predefined segments remain available. Reread the policy text before every campaign, because it changes often.
How long before you see results?
The first enquiries arrive in the first week. Cost per enquiry settles after 2 to 3 months, once the account has enough conversions for automated bidding and the negatives have been cleaned up against the real search terms. On Valore Solare the first month produced 9 enquiries at €212 each; eleven months later the average was €70.78.
Where to start
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 is the number that multiplies everything else: at £127 per enquiry and a 50% booking rate a patient costs £254, at 70% about £181. Then set the budget with the CPC table and your town. If you want us to look at an account that is already running or at the numbers for your area, get in touch: it is the work we do in Google Ads management for local businesses.
