What are you counting as a conversion?
Check this first, because the account buys more of whatever it is told to count. If the main goal is a click, a page view or a form nobody reads, the report can look busy while the appointment book is empty.
Use three words and keep them apart.
| Word | What it is | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Click | A visit to your page | Google Ads report |
| Lead | A call, a form or a message | Google Ads, call log, inbox |
| Booking | A new patient on the appointment book | Your practice software |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
In Google Ads, a primary conversion is the action Smart Bidding uses to decide what to buy. A secondary conversion is only for observation. Google’s own phone-call setup page says this (read 12 October 2026), so a wrong setting is a real failure mode, not a detail.
- Open the account’s goals and list every conversion action marked as primary.
- If the only primary action is a click, a page view or an unread form, change it to a call worth answering.
- Later, upload the appointments that were attended, so the account learns from real patients. Google links to this route as “calls via uploads” and in “Different ways to track conversions”.
A minimum call length is a filter the practice chooses, so a wrong number does not enter the report. One advertiser in a 21 August 2024 r/PPC thread counted a call of at least 120 seconds. That was the advertiser’s own rule, not a Google standard.
Are the calls being answered and booked?
A call that nobody answers, or that finds no free chair, is not an advertising failure, but it still shows up as a poor result. Compare one week of calls with the appointment book for the same week.
- Count the calls from ads, and how long each lasted.
- Mark each one: answered, missed, or answered with no slot.
- Check how long each web form sat before someone replied. A form that waits overnight is a missed call.
Count the missed calls in your own week. The missed-call calculator turns your own numbers into a dollar figure.
One marketer on X (@navinmodi, 24 September 2026) wrote that leads arrived and bookings did not until someone worked the leads. It is one anecdote from outside Australia, but your own call log tests the same point.
Are you buying searches that cannot become patients?
Open the search-terms report and read the actual words people typed before they clicked. Waste is usually easy to spot: job searches, “free dental care”, home whitening, and city-wide terms for a practice that serves one suburb (Loudachris, retrieved 12 October 2026).
- Add the irrelevant terms as negative keywords, so the ad stops showing for them.
- Treat “cheap dentist” as a price shopper, and a negative candidate rather than a growth term.
- Do not add a patient term to the negative list just because that click was expensive.
The full list of terms is its own page: best keywords for dental Google Ads. What a click costs is on what Google Ads costs a dentist.
Does the page match the ad?
An implant ad that opens on the homepage loses the patient. Five Australian agency pages name this same failure: PSM Digital (May 2026), Dental Rank (9 February 2026), Content Clicks (17 August 2026), Pracxcel (14 July 2026) and Smart Dental Marketing (15 May 2026).
Send each service to its own page, and check that page against this list.
- It names the suburb and the service the ad promised.
- It says what happens next, and the fee, or how the fee is given (for example, quoted at the visit).
- It offers one action: book or call.
- The phone number works with one tap on a mobile, and the opening hours are true.
Pracxcel’s test is a quick way to point the blame. If the click-through rate is fine and conversion is weak, look at the page. If the click-through rate is weak, look at the search term and the ad.
Is the ad lawful, and is that why it looks plain?
A compliant Australian ad can look plainer than a US one, and that is not a fault. Section 133 of the National Law, enforced by Ahpra, is why the playbook differs (Ahpra, Advertising and the law, reviewed 2 September 2025).
- A lawful ad states a fact a patient can use: suburb, service, hours and registration.
- It does not use a clinical testimonial or promise an outcome.
- It does not offer a discount with no terms.
- A fee in the ad must be the whole story: Ahpra says price advertising should include the total price, not only the first consultation.
If the click-through rate is the problem, read the ad against these rules before you try to make it bolder. A sentence copied from a US template, such as “pain-free implants today, 50% off”, may be the winning ad in a US account and a complaint in an Australian one. An emergency ad that runs when the practice is closed also fails the “accurate” test. Read the Ahpra advertising rules for dental marketing for the full list, and dental marketing ideas for what you can do instead.
Have you mixed emergency, implants and checkups in one campaign?
Emergency care, implants and a checkup are different searches with different values. When one campaign buys all three, a burst of emergency clicks can spend the implant budget, and one ad has to open on one page for every service.
Split them into separate campaigns, so that each ad opens on its own page and the report shows which service the money went to. Loudachris and Dental Rank both recommend this.
How long do you wait, and when do you stop?
Not three days. Content Clicks (17 August 2026) says to give an account a full quarter before you judge it. That is the firm’s own line, not a Google rule. The r/PPC thread above is the caution: commenters said three days at a small budget is too small a sample.
A week can show broken tracking, a homepage landing page and junk search terms. It cannot show a stable cost per booked patient.
Stop or rebuild the campaign when the checks above fail, not when the cost of a click feels high. What a click costs is on the cost page, and how to set a monthly figure is on the budget page. For the bigger picture, see how to get more new dental patients.
Questions
What is a good conversion rate for dental Google Ads in Australia?
There is no single number to aim at.
One named Australian account is Sarina Dental. Its published lead conversion rate moved between about 5% and about 11% from November 2025 to April 2026 (Marketing Together). That is one Queensland account counting leads, not attended patients.
Use your own appointment book to set your own baseline, and count bookings, not clicks. To work yours out, divide the patients who attended after finding you through ads by the enquiries the ads produced over the same months. Track it month by month, and judge any change against your own earlier months, not against another practice.
Should we send ads to the homepage?
No. Send each service to its own page.
Five Australian agency pages name this failure: PSM Digital (May 2026), Dental Rank (9 February 2026), Content Clicks (17 August 2026), Pracxcel (14 July 2026) and Smart Dental Marketing (15 May 2026). A homepage has to serve every visitor, so it rarely matches what one search and one ad promised.
A good landing page names the suburb and the service, says what happens next, and offers one action, book or call. See the check on whether the page matches the ad.
How many calls should we count?
Count the calls that became a booking, and use a minimum call length only as a filter.
A minimum duration keeps wrong numbers out of the report. Google’s phone-call setup page does not define that duration as a patient, so it is your rule, not a standard. One advertiser in a 21 August 2024 r/PPC thread used 120 seconds.
Compare a week of counted calls with the appointment book, then adjust the filter to match what really became a booking.
Our click-through rate is low. Should the ad be bolder?
Not yet. Check the search term and the page first.
Then check that the ad states a fact a patient can use: suburb, service and hours. Do not add a clinical promise to lift the rate. Ahpra’s rules on testimonials, outcomes and unclear offers still apply to every ad.
A low click-through rate says people saw the ad and did not click. It does not say whether those who did click became a booking, so read it beside the count of booked patients.
If the search terms are patients and the page matches, then test plainer, truer wording against the old text.
We get leads and the book is empty. Is the campaign broken?
Not yet. Check what happened to each lead before you change the campaign.
- Did anyone call back, and how fast?
- Do the form fields match a real appointment?
- Was the lead a job seeker or a price shopper?
The practice’s own call log is the evidence. A marketer on X (@navinmodi, 24 September 2026) described leads that only became bookings once someone worked them.
Note where each lead stopped, whether at the first call, the callback, the form or the booking, and fix that step first. Changing the campaign before then pays for a new set of leads that stall at the same place.
Are Local Services Ads the fix in Australia?
Do not buy them on the strength of this page.
Public pages disagree on whether Local Services Ads exist in Australia. The Profit Platform (25 September 2026) says Australia is not on Google’s list, Digital Nomads HQ (22 July 2026) says they never launched here, and Adstralis (22 May 2026) says some industries can use them. Check eligibility with Google for your own address before you spend anything on them.
Search ads are the campaign a practice can run and audit today.
What should we spend?
Work it out from the new patients you need and what one booked patient costs you. The method is on how much a dental practice should spend on marketing, and what clicks cost is on the cost page.
Start from how many new patients your book can take and what one booked patient is worth to the practice, then work back to a monthly figure. Do not set it from a few days of clicks: commenters in the r/PPC thread (21 August 2024) said three days at a small budget was too little data.
Can we judge the campaign after the first week?
You can judge the set-up, but not the result.
A week can show broken tracking, a homepage landing page and junk search terms. It cannot show a stable cost per booked patient. The r/PPC thread (21 August 2024) is a cautionary sample: commenters said three days at a small budget was too little data.
Check what the week can show: that tracking fires, that each ad opens on the right page, that the search terms are patients, and that calls reach a person. Then wait before you judge the cost of a booked patient.
Content Clicks (17 August 2026) says to allow a full quarter before you judge an account.
Sources
Charlie, Co-founder, Shoutout Digital.
How this page was made. Drafted with AI assistance. Sources checked by Charlie.
- Google Ads Help: set up your phone call conversionsRead 12 October 2026
- Google Ads Help: different ways to track conversionsRead 12 October 2026
- Marketing Together: Sarina Dental case studyMonth table November 2025 to April 2026
- Content Clicks: Google Ads for dentists (Dr Sandy Adel)17 August 2026
- Pracxcel: Google Ads benchmarks for healthcare clinics, 2026 edition14 July 2026
- Loudachris: dental Google AdsNo clear publication date; read 12 October 2026
- Dental Rank: dental Google Ads in 20269 February 2026
- PSM Digital: Google Ads for dentistsMay 2026
- Smart Dental Marketing: Google Ads strategy for dentists15 May 2026
- Ahpra: advertising and the lawPage reviewed 2 September 2025
- Ahpra: summary of the advertising requirementsPage reviewed 2 September 2025
- Reddit r/PPC: new Google Ads campaign for a dental practice21 August 2024
- @navinmodi on X: leads that did not become bookings24 September 2026
- The Profit Platform: Google Local Services AdsUpdated 25 September 2026
- Digital Nomads HQ: Local Services Ads into Performance Max22 July 2026
- Adstralis: Local Services Ads in Australia22 May 2026
Related reading. Best keywords for dental Google Ads, what Google Ads costs a dentist, the marketing budget, and Google Ads for dentists.
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