Google Ads for Therapists and Psychiatrists: What It Costs and When It Is Worth It

Google Ads is the fastest way to get a therapy or psychiatry practice in front of someone searching for help. It is also the fastest way to spend $1,000 and have nothing to show for it. Both happen every day, often to practices in the same city bidding on the same words.

Here is what it actually costs, what Google will and will not let you do, and how to tell in the first month whether it is working.

What a click costs

Search ads are priced per click, and the price is set by auction against everyone else bidding on that search. For mental health searches in the US, published benchmarks put the average cost per click around $4 to $5, with competitive metro areas and high-intent phrases ("psychiatrist near me accepting new patients") running $8 to $15 and beyond. Telehealth-only searches can be cheaper; anything with "insurance" or a specific medication in it tends to be more expensive.

Clicks are not clients. To get from one to the other you need two more numbers:

• Conversion rate. Of the people who click, how many call, book or submit a form? On a good practice landing page, 8 to 15 percent. On a homepage with twelve modalities and no phone number, 1 to 3 percent.
• Close rate. Of the people who inquire, how many become clients? For a practice that answers the phone and has availability, 30 to 60 percent.

Put those together with a $5 click:

• Good page: $5 ÷ 10% = $50 per inquiry; ÷ 40% close = about $125 per new client.
• Weak page: $5 ÷ 2% = $250 per inquiry; ÷ 40% close = about $625 per new client.

Same ads, same budget, five times the cost. That is why the landing page matters more than the ad copy, and why we tell practices to fix the site before spending a dollar on ads. If your site is not converting, start there.

For a client worth $150 a session who stays eight sessions, $125 to acquire them is an easy yes. $625 is marginal. $1,200, which is what a poorly run campaign produces, is a loss.

What Google's healthcare rules allow

Google has specific policies for healthcare advertisers and they trip up practices constantly.

• You cannot use remarketing or personalized targeting based on health. No "show ads to people who visited my anxiety page." Google prohibits targeting based on health conditions. Keep targeting to location and search terms.
• Some categories need certification. Addiction treatment advertisers must be certified through LegitScript before ads run. Telehealth prescribing and certain medications have their own restrictions. Standard psychotherapy and psychiatry do not require certification, but expect an initial policy review.
• Claims have to be true and non-sensational. "Cure your depression in 6 weeks" will get disapproved. "Depression treatment in Winter Park, accepting new patients" is fine.
• No prescription drug names in ads unless you are a certified pharmacy or manufacturer. Psychiatry practices should write "medication management," not the drug name.

Local Services Ads: not available for mental health

Local Services Ads, the "Google Guaranteed" or "Google Screened" listings at the very top of some searches, are pay-per-lead rather than pay-per-click and often outperform regular search ads. As of 2026 Google offers them to a growing list of healthcare categories, including chiropractors, physical therapists, dentists and dermatologists, but therapists, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists and med spas are not eligible categories. If a vendor promises you Local Services Ads for a therapy practice, ask them to show you one running.

If you run a chiropractic or PT practice, this changes the math; see our chiropractic guide.

A starter setup that does not waste money

If the site is ready and you want to try ads yourself, this is the minimum viable campaign:

1. One campaign, Search only. Turn off Display, turn off Search Partners, do not let Google "expand" your reach.
2. Location: your actual service area. Not the state. A 15 to 25 mile radius around the office, or the specific counties you take clients from. If you are telehealth-only, the state you are licensed in.
3. Keywords in phrase or exact match. "anxiety therapist [city]", "therapist near me", "psychiatrist [city] accepting new patients", "couples counseling [city]". Ten to twenty of these. Never broad match; it will spend your budget on "free online therapy quiz."
4. Negative keywords from day one. free, jobs, salary, degree, school, how to become, reddit, quiz, worksheet. Add more weekly from the search terms report.
5. Send each ad group to a matching page. The anxiety ad goes to the anxiety page, not the homepage.
6. Track calls and forms as conversions. If you skip this you will never know what worked. Google's call tracking is free for ads; forms need a conversion tag or a thank-you page.
7. Budget: $15 to $30 a day ($450 to $900 a month) for a solo practice in a mid-size market. Enough to get 100 to 200 clicks in a month, which is enough data to decide.

Then leave it alone for three weeks except to add negatives. Do not touch bids daily.

How to judge it after one month

You are looking at three numbers, and you should be able to pull them from the campaign and your intake log in ten minutes:

• Cost per inquiry. Total spend divided by calls plus forms. Under $75 is good for therapy; under $150 is workable for psychiatry.
• Inquiry quality. How many were real prospective clients versus job seekers, existing clients, or people looking for something you do not offer? This is where negatives and page copy fix things.
• Cost per new client. Spend divided by clients who booked and showed. Compare it to what a client is worth to you over their course of treatment.

If cost per new client is well under lifetime value, increase the budget 20 to 30 percent and repeat. If it is not, look at the landing page and the search terms report before blaming the channel.

When not to run ads

• Your caseload is nearly full. Ads produce inquiries fast; if you cannot take them, you are paying to disappoint people.
• Nobody answers the phone. An ad click that goes to voicemail is money spent. Practices that answer within an hour convert several times more of their ad inquiries than practices that call back the next day.
• The website is not ready. No service pages, no fees listed, no clear booking action, slow on mobile. Fix these first; they are cheaper than ads and they help the free traffic too.
• You have not done the free things. A complete Google Business Profile and proper service pages usually produce more inquiries per month than a $500 ad budget, for nothing. Do them first.

If you would rather not learn Google Ads

There is a real learning curve, and the mistakes cost money. Arclo runs Google Ads as an add-on for practices whose site we manage: we build and run the campaign, tie every call and form back to the ad that produced it, and report cost per new patient rather than clicks. It is priced at 10% of ad spend with a $49 minimum, month to month, and it only makes sense once the site is in shape. That last part is why we sell it as an add-on rather than the main thing.

Whether you run it yourself or not, the sequence is the same: site first, tracking second, ads third.