On the results page for "private cardiologist london", in September 2026, the crawler did not find a single ad. And in the DataForSEO database Bupa, Nuffield Health and HCA Healthcare UK, three of the most visible private healthcare sites in the UK, have 3, 1 and 0 paid keywords respectively. For a private practice that is good news: the big groups are barely present in the ads, and clicks cost between £1.90 and £7.73 on the keywords with data.
Google Ads for a private practice, a multi-specialty clinic or a hospital works with local Search campaigns on "service + city" and "near me", ads written within the limits of healthcare advertising, a service page as the landing page and tracking of bookings and calls. Two sets of rules change compared with a normal account: Google's healthcare content policies, which ban remarketing on health conditions, and UK professional and advertising rules, which require every claim to be accurate and provable.
This article covers the paid side; the organic side is in SEO for healthcare. Dentists and psychologists have different constraints and CPCs: Google Ads for dentists and Google Ads for psychologists.
What Google allows you to advertise in healthcare
Two Google policies to read before opening the account.
The first is the Healthcare and medicines policy. Consultations, tests and services at a medical centre can be advertised. Prescription-only medicines cannot, nor can online pharmacies without Google certification (in the UK they must also be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council), nor experimental or unapproved treatments. A clinic that names a medicine in an ad, even just to describe a therapy, risks disapproval.
The second is the policy on health in personalised advertising. Health is a sensitive interest category: you cannot use advertiser-created audiences (Customer Match, website remarketing lists, similar segments) for ads related to physical or mental health conditions, illnesses, sexual health or chronic conditions. Google's examples are treatments for diabetes and arthritis, counselling for depression and anxiety, and CPAP devices. Google's predefined segments (in-market, affinity, demographics, location) remain usable, because they exclude sensitive signals automatically.
In practice: no remarketing to people who visited the "oncology consultation" page. It is the mistake we find most often in the medical accounts we inherit. In healthcare, remarketing is limited to generic audiences (home page or locations page visitors) and generic messages.
On top of these come UK rules. The GMC's Good medical practice requires anything a doctor communicates, advertising included, to be accurate and not false or misleading, and forbids exploiting people's vulnerability or lack of medical knowledge (paragraphs 89 and 90). The CAP Code, which also covers paid search ads, requires evidence for objective claims and has a section (12) on medicines, medical devices and health-related products. Google does not check any of this; complaints go to the ASA, and the GMC deals with the doctor.
Which campaign: local Search, not Performance Max
For a practice with one or a few sites the right campaign is Search with radius targeting (10-15 km from the clinic in a city, 25-30 km in a rural area) and the "presence" option rather than "presence or interest", otherwise you pay for clicks from people searching "cardiologist london" from Manchester. One campaign per site, if the sites are in different towns.
Performance Max is not the starting point. Without a history of real conversions the algorithm optimises on whatever it finds, and in a new medical account it finds clicks, not bookings. It makes sense after three to six months, with at least 30 properly recorded conversions a month and the Google Business Profile linked, to cover Maps and Display with the same assets. Our Contesini case, two branches in the province of Mantua in Italy, combines local Search and Performance Max: 299 leads in seven months at €7.20 per conversion, 68% of which became opportunities. It is not healthcare, but the structure (a physical branch, customers within a 30 km radius) is the same as a clinic's.
For a clinic in Switzerland the scheme is the same: in Ticino we draw the radius on the canton and set the languages to German and French as well as Italian, for people searching from Zurich for a clinic in Lugano.
Further reading: when Google Ads makes sense.
Keywords: service + city, "near me", and the Keyword Planner problem
One ad group per service (cardiology consultation, ultrasound scan, dermatology consultation) and one per specialty (cardiologist, dermatologist), each with city and "near me" variants. Phrase match for services, exact match for the few high-CPC keywords. No broad match in the first weeks: in healthcare it brings in searches for symptoms and conditions, which are cheap but do not book.
The problem is that the Keyword Planner is partly blind in this sector. Of the 22 UK service and specialty keywords we queried, 9 came back with no volume or CPC, including "private cardiologist london", "private dermatologist london", "private gp london" and "private gp near me". That does not mean nobody searches them: the results page for "private cardiologist london" has a local pack of three practices, an AI Overview and ten organic results from specialist clinics. You plan with related keywords that have data, and after two weeks the search terms report tells you the truth.
| Keyword | Searches/month | Average CPC | Top of page bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| dermatologist london | 9,900 | £4.86 | £1.73-4.89 |
| private doctor near me | 5,400 | £4.19 | £1.13-6.71 |
| medical centre near me | 4,400 | £1.90 | £0.78-3.19 |
| book doctor appointment online | 3,600 | £2.06 | £0.79-2.64 |
| eye clinic near me | 2,900 | £4.96 | £1.53-6.05 |
| private clinic near me | 2,400 | £4.48 | £1.32-5.00 |
| trichologist near me | 2,400 | £3.60 | £0.97-4.83 |
| nutritionist london | 1,000 | £3.74 | £1.43-3.87 |
| trichologist london | 1,000 | £6.78 | £1.96-38.21 |
| cardiologist london | 720 | £7.73 | £1.88-8.89 |
| private ecg near me | 480 | £2.72 | £0.72-2.69 |
The spread is wide: "medical centre near me" costs less than £2, "cardiologist london" almost £8, and on "trichologist london" the high top of page bid reaches £38, a sign that a few advertisers are bidding very aggressively on it.
Negatives go in from day one, because in healthcare there are plenty of stray searches: "nhs", "free", "a&e", "hospital" (if you are not one), "jobs", "vacancies", "salary", "course", "training", "what does a", "symptoms", "home remedies". A private clinic that does not exclude "nhs" pays for clicks from people looking for the public service.
Further reading: how to do keyword research.
Ads: what to write within GMC and CAP rules
A Google ad has 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90. In healthcare you fill them with information, not promises. This works: "Cardiology consultation + ECG", "Report on the same day", "Clinic on X Street, London", "Book online", "£250 all-inclusive", "Dr Smith, consultant cardiologist". This does not, because it cannot be proven or plays on the patient's worry: "London's best cardiologist", "Unbeatable prices", "Guaranteed results", "Don't wait until it's too late".
You can state the price, and in medical ads it pays to: on "private cardiologist london" the first "People also ask" question is "How much does a private cardiologist consultation cost in the UK?", and one of the related searches is "private cardiologist london prices". Under the CAP Code a quoted price must include all non-optional charges: it must be the total cost to the patient, not a base price with extras added later.
Four assets carry the most weight in a local medical account. The call asset, with the reception number and a schedule matching the hours when someone answers: an ad with the phone active at 10pm pays for clicks that end up on voicemail. The location asset, linked to the Google Business Profile, which adds address and distance. Sitelinks to "Book", "Locations and opening hours", "Services and prices", "Our doctors". Callouts for practical information: "On-site parking", "Results online", "Insured patients welcome".
On competitors: some clinic chains buy their competitors' brand names as keywords. Google allows it, but an ad from a doctor that appears for another clinic's name sits badly with the duty not to mislead. We do not do it on medical accounts.
Landing page: the service page, not the home page
The landing page for "private cardiologist london" is the cardiology consultation page, with the same information as the ad: what it includes, how long it takes, price, location, doctor, how to book. Above the fold, two ways to book: a clickable phone number and a three-field form (name, phone, service). Using the home page as the landing page is the most common and most expensive mistake, because the patient lands on a list of specialties and leaves.
The form must not ask for the reason for the visit or symptoms. It is not needed to book, and it is health data, special category data under UK GDPR, that would end up in a CRM and in Google Ads. Service and preferred time are enough; reception can ask the rest on the phone.
If the diary runs on an external booking platform such as Doctify, the "Book" button can point there, but the click must be tracked as a conversion before the user leaves the site.
Further reading: why a website does not convert.
Tracking: bookings and calls, without health data
A medical practice has three conversions: booking form submitted, call from the ad or the website (with a minimum duration of 30-60 seconds, to exclude wrong numbers), click through to the external booking diary. Nothing else. Time on page, scroll depth and menu clicks are not conversions, and if they are imported as such the campaign optimises on nothing.
We say this because we see it in almost every account we inherit, not only in healthcare. Valore Solare had 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks: they were technical events. Sunscape in 2024 counted 1,487 conversions at €0.61 each, none of which was an enquiry. A medical account with 800 "conversions" a month and 12 real bookings is not an exception.
Keep event names generic: "booking", "call", not "booking_oncology_consultation". An event with the service in its name, linked to a user identifier, is health data passed to Google. The same goes for uploading customer lists: in healthcare you do not do it.
Further reading: how to set up Google Analytics.
How much budget you need: the maths from real CPCs
The calculation uses three numbers: CPC, landing page conversion rate, value of a booking. The CPCs are above. The conversion rate of a well-built service page, with phone and form, sits between 5% and 10% in the local projects we manage; we use 6% to be prudent.
With an average CPC of £3.50 (between "medical centre near me" at £1.90 and "private clinic near me" at £4.48, with a few pricier keywords) and a 6% rate, a booking costs £58. With "nutritionist london" at £3.74 it costs £62. With "cardiologist london" at £7.73 it costs £129, which only makes sense if the value of the first consultation and the follow-ups covers it.
| Scenario | CPC | Conversion rate | Cost per booking | Monthly budget | Expected bookings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-specialty clinic, general services | £3.50 | 6% | £58 | £900 | 15 |
| Private specialty (nutrition) | £3.74 | 6% | £62 | £1,000 | 16 |
| High-CPC specialty (cardiology, London) | £7.73 | 6% | £129 | £1,500 | 11 |
The sensible minimum budget for one site is therefore £30 a day, about £900 a month: below that, daily clicks are so few that the algorithm does not learn and the data cannot be read. Anyone proposing £5 a day on a medical campaign is selling a report with one or two clicks a day and no decision possible.
Two caveats. The first month costs double: on Valore Solare the first month produced 9 enquiries at €212 each, and once up to speed the cost per enquiry fell to €70.78. On Macropix it went from €94 in 2024 to €39.44 in 2025 on the same account. And the 6% is our own average across local sectors, not a medical figure: on a new healthcare account it needs checking after 60 days and the maths redoing.
Further reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to compare CPCs and conversion rates by sector.
The mistakes we find in medical accounts
- Remarketing on condition or service pages. It breaches the personalised advertising policy and is the most common cause of suspension.
- Symptom and condition keywords. "Chest pain", "skin rash": cheap clicks that bring readers, not patients. The big groups pick up that traffic organically with their health information pages (Bupa has an estimated 3.3 million organic visits a month, Nuffield Health 1.6 million), with almost no ads.
- Home page as the landing page. The patient searches for a service and lands on a list of departments.
- Technical conversions imported. Scrolls, time on page and menu clicks counted as bookings: the algorithm optimises on the wrong clicks.
- Ads running when reception is closed. The call is the main conversion on mobile; without ad scheduling half the budget ends up on voicemail.
- Unprovable claims in ads. "Best", "leading", "guaranteed": Google will not stop them, but they are exactly what a complaint to the ASA picks up.
An observation, with caution: in the DataForSEO database the three big groups have almost no paid keywords, and there were no ads on the results page we checked. They may be running local campaigns that a national crawler does not pick up. But for a clinic with two sites, the data says that ads on "service + city" face little competition from the big players today.
Google Ads or SEO for a medical practice?
Google Ads brings bookings from the second week and switches off when the budget stops. SEO takes three to six months on service pages, but the Google Business Profile and the location page work with no cost per click: on "private cardiologist london" the three practices in the local pack have 238 to 379 reviews each, all with a 5.0 rating. The order we follow: the Search campaign on the ten most requested services starts straight away, and in the same quarter we write the ten service pages that act as landing pages and, over time, rank on their own. The organic method is in SEO for healthcare; how the two channels add up, in SEO and Google Ads together.
Frequently asked questions
Can a doctor advertise on Google?
Yes. In the UK the GMC allows doctors to advertise their services as long as the information is accurate, not misleading and does not exploit patients' vulnerability or lack of medical knowledge, and the ads must follow the CAP Code. Google allows ads for medical services; it bans prescription medicines and unapproved treatments.
How much does a Google Ads click cost for a private practice?
Between £1.90 ("medical centre near me") and £7.73 ("cardiologist london") on the UK keywords with data, with top-of-page bids that can go much higher (£38 on "trichologist london"). For many specialty + city keywords Google gives no CPC: you find out after two weeks of running the campaign.
Can a clinic use remarketing?
Only with generic audiences and messages. Google's policy on health in personalised advertising bans advertiser-created segments for ads linked to health conditions, treatments and illnesses. A list of "oncology consultation page visitors" is not allowed; a list of "home page visitors" with an ad about your locations is.
Does Google Ads work for a pharmacy?
For a high-street pharmacy, yes, with local campaigns on services (health checks, home delivery) and over-the-counter products. Selling medicines online requires Google certification and, in the UK, registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council; prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised.
Where to start
If you already have an account, open the conversions report and count how many are real bookings or calls: if they are less than half, the first job is tracking, not keywords. If you are starting from scratch, choose the three services with the highest margin and the easiest-to-reach site, write the three pages, and launch a single Search campaign at £30 a day for 60 days. The cost per booking worked out from that data tells you whether and how far to expand.
If you would like us to look at the account before you spend any more, get in touch: the first thing we check is the conversions.
