A veterinary website is the site a vet practice uses to tell pet owners which services it offers, for which species, how emergencies are handled out of hours, who the vets are and what things cost. In the UK that last part is about to become a legal duty: under the CMA's Order, every practice must publish a price list on its website, covering the 36 standard services in Schedule 1, by the next working day after 22 March 2027 for businesses with 14 or fewer practices (GOV.UK guidance, read on 13 November 2026).
Today most practices are a long way off.
When the Competition and Markets Authority closed its market investigation in March 2026, it found that fewer than 40% of practices had prices on their websites, and those that did covered few services and were "sometimes hard to find" (CMA press release).
Owners are already asking. In the UK "vets near me" gets 165,000 searches a month, "cat neutering cost" 2,900 and "vet prices" 720, with a peak of 1,600 in March 2026 (Google Ads data via DataForSEO, 13 November 2026).
And the practice owner who searches "vet website design"? They find agency service pages, Dribbble shots, template marketplaces and a free website builder. None of the top UK results explains what the CMA Order means for the website itself.
We work from the other side of Europe, so we tested the same question where we could measure it: we opened 21 vet practice websites that Google shows for "veterinario" in three Italian cities, Bologna, Verona and Palermo. Italy has no CMA Order. The result shows what happens when nobody forces the issue:
- no prices at all: 0 Italian sites out of 21 showed the price of a single service;
- claims instead of facts: 6 out of 21 used lines such as "the best care" or "the only one";
- nobody checking: 8 out of 21 had a visible error, from a "Call now" button dialling 0123456789 to template filler text.
Why listen to us?
We do not have a vet practice among the clients whose figures we can publish, and we say so upfront. The method is the one we use on local projects: for Contesini Consulenze, two energy advice offices near Mantua, a new landing page, tracking and local campaigns brought in 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, with 68% becoming sales opportunities. It always starts with a page that answers the question the person actually has.
The search side (Google Business Profile, reviews, emergencies, ChatGPT) is covered in our guide to veterinary SEO. This one is about what goes on the website.
What 21 vet websites in Bologna, Verona and Palermo contain (none publishes a price)
The typical Italian vet website has opening hours, a team page and a phone number, but no prices, no client area and no online booking. That is what we found opening 21 sites on 13 November 2026.
Method: Google searches for "veterinario Bologna", "veterinario Verona" and "veterinario Palermo", localised to each city and read with DataForSEO. Seven sites per city: first the map pack listings, then related sites and organic results for single practices (directories, portals and Facebook pages excluded). We read the home, contact, team and services pages.
| What we looked for | Bologna (7) | Verona (7) | Palermo (7) | Total (21) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening hours visible | 7 | 5 | 7 | 19 |
| Vets listed with names and qualifications | 7 | 5 | 6 | 18 |
| Tap-to-call phone link (correct number) | 5 | 3 | 6 | 14 |
| Link to privacy notice | 5 | 5 | 4 | 14 |
| Emergency cover with clear hours (24/7 or on call) | 5 | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| Clinical director named | 6 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Species treated listed (dogs, cats, exotics) | 4 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| One page per service | 1 | 3 | 5 | 9 |
| Visible errors (placeholders, broken links, fake number, abandoned site) | 1 | 2 | 5 | 8 |
| Online booking (form or system) | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Superlative or comparative claims | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 |
| VeterinaryCare or LocalBusiness structured data | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Price of at least one service | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Client area, vaccination reminders or app | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Group practices had the most complete sites. The AniCura practice near Bologna had online booking, VeterinaryCare structured data and "Emergenze 00 - 24" on the page. A Ca' Zampa hospital in Bologna named its clinical director with his registration number.
The only price we found in the whole exercise was not on a vet's site: "30 to 90 euros" for a home visit, in a directory snippet for Palermo.
Italy is not the UK. But the CMA's own numbers say UK practices start from a similar place, and the gap is the same one: owners search for prices, practices do not publish them.
Which pages a vet practice website needs (and the search behind each one)
A vet practice website needs one page for each question owners actually ask Google: emergencies, individual services, species treated, the team and prices. The volumes below are UK monthly averages read on 13 November 2026.
- Emergencies and out of hours. "Emergency vet" gets 9,900 searches, "out of hours vet" 2,400 (4,400 in October 2026). The page says who covers your nights, where they are and what the first consultation costs. RCVS guidance 9.2a already asks practices to give clients written information on "the provision, initial cost and location of the out-of-hours emergency service".
- Neutering. "Cat neutering cost" gets 2,900 searches, 3,600 in January to March and in September. Right age, fasting, recovery and price on one page.
- Vaccinations. "Dog vaccinations cost" gets 880. Puppy course, boosters, what to bring.
- Exotics. "Exotic vet" gets 2,900, with a peak of 5,400 in October 2026. If you see rabbits, reptiles or birds, a dedicated page beats a line in a services list.
- The team. Names, qualifications, interests. Under RCVS guidance 23.25-23.26 only vets on the RCVS specialist list can be called specialists, so the wording matters.
- Prices. The page the CMA now requires, covered in the next section.
Does anyone read all these pages?
Google does. On a bare "vets near me" the map listing wins; on specific searches the page that answers wins, as we measured in the veterinary SEO guide. How to structure a site so Google reads it well is in our guide to building an SEO-friendly website.
The CMA price list: what goes on the website and by when
The CMA's Veterinary Services Market Investigation Order requires vet businesses to publish on their website a price for each of the 36 standard services listed in Schedule 1, except those the practice does not offer. The guidance for small businesses is explicit: "You must publish a price list on your website", and the list itself must not carry "any additional text" beyond the service names.
- 14 or fewer practices: price list, practice information and pet care plans from the next working day after 22 March 2027.
- 15 or more practices: the same duties from the next working day after 22 December 2026, according to the guidance for large businesses.
- Ownership: groups must display their identity "clearly and prominently" on websites.
- Booking emails: when you confirm a consultation by email, you state its price and link to the page with your price list.
That last point turns the price page into part of the booking flow, not a document hidden in the footer. The CMA also requires a written estimate for any treatment expected to cost £500 or more.
What a vet can say on the website (facts yes, "the best care" no)
A UK vet website can say what the practice does, who works there and what it costs, as long as it is accurate and verifiable. RCVS supporting guidance chapter 23 says that "all advertising should be accurate, truthful, and not of a character likely to bring the profession into disrepute", and chapter 9 adds that pricing information "should not be false or misleading".
Italy is stricter on tone. The Italian vets' code of conduct (FNOVI, article 51) allows fees to be published but bans comparative and "suggestive" claims. Even so, 6 of the 21 Italian sites used lines like "we guarantee the best veterinary care". In the UK a claim like that would have to meet the CAP Code, which RCVS guidance asks vets to follow.
In practice:
- yes: "consultation £X", "orthopaedic surgery", "we see rabbits, ferrets and reptiles", "24-hour emergency cover provided by...";
- no: "the best vets in town", "specialist" for someone not on the RCVS list, "Dr" without "veterinary surgeon" or "MRCVS" alongside.
Booking, WhatsApp and contact forms (6 Italian sites take requests online, 1 has a real calendar)
Online booking for a vet practice can be a live calendar or a request form the practice answers. In our sample 6 sites out of 21 had one of the two, but only one had a real calendar: a Vetstoria widget on an AniCura site. The other five were "name, phone, message" forms.
A form is fine if it does three things: asks only for what you need to call back (name, phone, species, reason), says how quickly you reply, and makes clear it is not a consultation. Form data is personal data about the owner, so it needs a privacy notice: 14 of the 21 sites linked one. Tap-to-call worked on 14 sites; on the other 7 the number was plain text or the link went to the wrong number.
Which brings us to the costly part…
Maintenance: a "Call now" button that dials 0123456789 (and 4 other errors)
An unchecked vet website loses enquiries without anyone noticing: the owner taps "Call", nothing happens, and they call the next practice on the map. 8 of the 21 sites had at least one visible error. We report them without names:
- The fake number. A Verona practice shows "Call now" next to its real number, but the link dials 0123456789, the template's sample number.
- The demo theme left live. One clinic's homepage has "Lorem ipsum" text, an invented team member ("Trevor Maccenzy, Sonographer") and a canonical tag pointing to the theme's demo site.
- Page-builder placeholders. A Palermo clinic repeats "Titolo diapositiva" ("Slide title") 10 times on its homepage.
- The lost domain. A domain Google still links to a Verona practice now hosts 41 articles about parking spaces and recipes, with the practice name in the footer.
- Broken links. Two "Find out more" buttons on a services page point to incomplete addresses, under a "Copyright © 2022" footer.
With 165,000 monthly searches for "vets near me" in the UK, mostly on phones, a broken call button costs a call every time someone taps it. The first check we run when auditing a website that is not generating leads is exactly this: tap every contact button on a phone.
Is your practice website ready for the CMA price list?
In our survey of 21 vet websites, none published a price and 8 had an error that loses calls. We review your price page, service pages, out-of-hours information and contact buttons, page by page.
Book a strategy callHow the website affects ChatGPT and AI Overviews (in Palermo, Google's AI listed 4 practices open 24/7)
AI answers pick the practices that state the requested fact explicitly: hours, emergency cover, phone number, address. We saw it on 13 November 2026 on the same Italian searches as our sample.
For "veterinario Palermo", Google's AI Overview listed four practices open 24 hours a day, each with address, phone and "official site". One of them was the clinic with "Slide title" repeated 10 times. The AI does not judge the quality of the site; it takes the facts it finds written down. The owner who clicks through still sees the page.
Two things help: one page per service, because ChatGPT and other AI tools break a question into sub-questions (query fan-out) and look for the page that answers each one; and VeterinaryCare structured data, used by only 2 of the 21 sites (4 counting generic LocalBusiness). Setup is in our guide to LocalBusiness schema.
In the UK there is one more route: the CMA says practice prices and ownership will feed the RCVS "Find a Vet" service and be shared with comparison sites. A clean price page on your own site is the version of that data you control. Nobody can promise a citation; our test across local sectors is in the guide to local AI visibility, and how we work on it is on the GEO page.
How much a vet website costs (the only public price list we found)
Few agencies publish prices for vet websites. The only public list we found is Italian: Langa Drive In (May 2026) quotes €1,990-2,200 for a brochure site and €3,750-4,200 with online booking, plus €590 a month for local SEO. We found no UK agency publishing a comparable list in the results we read.
What moves the price for a UK practice: how many service pages you need, whether booking connects to your practice management system, who writes and checks the clinical copy, and now the price list, which has to be kept current. General ranges are in our guide to website costs, and this is how we build sites in our web development service: pages that answer searches first, design second.
If the site has to bring in enquiries, plan it with the campaigns: the numbers for searches like "emergency vet" (£9.34 per click in the UK) are in our guide to Google Ads for vets, and the channels for collecting enquiries in the one on lead generation for vets. The rules that apply across healthcare are in our healthcare SEO guide.
FAQs about veterinary websites
Yes. Under the CMA's Order, vet businesses must publish on their website a price for each of the 36 standard services in Schedule 1 that they offer. Businesses with 14 or fewer practices must comply from the next working day after 22 March 2027; those with 15 or more from the next working day after 22 December 2026.
No. RCVS guidance says advertising must be accurate and truthful and follow the CAP Code, and a comparative claim like that needs evidence. State what you do instead: services, species, hours, qualifications.
No, unless they are on the RCVS specialist list: RCVS guidance 23.25-23.26 reserves the title for them. Describe the qualification or the area of interest instead.
It depends: if your practice management system supports a live calendar, it cuts phone calls. Otherwise a form that asks for name, phone, species and reason and says when you will call back is enough. In our Italian sample 6 sites out of 21 took requests online and only 1 had a real calendar.
It depends on your cover, but RCVS guidance 9.2a asks practices to give clients written information on the provision, initial cost and location of the out-of-hours emergency service. Put all three on one page, linked from the homepage.
Veterinary websites in short (and the page to write first)
Hours and team pages are everywhere: 19 and 18 Italian sites out of 21.
Prices are nowhere: 0 out of 21 in Italy, fewer than 40% of UK practices according to the CMA.
In the UK the price list becomes mandatory, for the 36 services in Schedule 1.
8 sites out of 21 had an error that loses calls.
AI answers take the facts that are written down, even from a neglected site.
If you write one page this month, write the price page, and write it before the deadline rather than on it. The CMA will push every practice to publish the same 36 prices in the same format, so the list alone will not set you apart. What will is the page around it: what is included in a consultation, what happens out of hours, what a neutering costs from admission to check-up. That context is what owners compare, and what AI answers quote.
If you want to start there, get in touch.
