Field Notes
Essays and analyses on Google Ads for independent veterinary practices. Written for practice owners, not the marketing coordinators who end up implementing the work.
Who actually owns your practice's website?
A common industry arrangement, the contract lines that create it, and the five-minute check that tells you where you stand.
The Veterinary Year
What the Data Says
The PIMS landscape through the booked-patient lens
Nine practice management systems, evaluated on one criterion nobody else uses: whether your marketing can be proven through them.
Read the post →What GeniusVets sells, and what it costs you
I checked every GeniusVets veterinary website I could find — 67 of them. They share one template, and often the same articles — each site claiming content that sometimes credits a competitor.
Read the post →Three of five veterinary agencies hide their pricing. Ask why.
"Call for pricing" is not a customer-service choice. It is a sales mechanism — and understanding how it works will save you money with whichever agency you hire, including one that isn't me.
Read the post →What I Don't Sell — How Not to Get Fooled
What a real SEO audit looks like, and what the scary ones are.
Every practice owner has received one: a PDF with red circles, a score out of 100, and a list of "critical errors." Here is how those are made, why they look the way they do, and what an audit that actually tells you something contains instead.
Read the post →The AI-search jargon, decoded for a veterinary practice.
Four new acronyms have arrived on agency price lists in the last two years. Here is what each one stands for, what it means in plain words, what you are being asked to pay for, and what — if anything — to actually do.
Read the post →Why I don't sell social media
I build Google Ads campaigns for veterinary practices, and I give away a full social calendar for free. Those two facts fit together.
Read the post →Five clauses to read before you sign a vet marketing contract
Nobody reads the marketing contract. The vendor is counting on it.
Read the post →Why I charge a flat $1,000 a month — and what percentage pricing is designed to do
Ask a marketing agency what veterinary marketing costs and you'll get the same answer every time: it depends. On your goals. On your market. On a discovery call.
Read the post →Pet owners are asking ChatGPT now. Should your practice advertise there?
OpenAI started showing ads inside ChatGPT this year, and a self-serve ads manager followed. The question that used to be a Google search — "why is my dog itching?" — is increasingly a conversation instead. Here is how the new ad slot actually works, and the honest answer on whether your marketing budget belongs in it yet.
Read the post →Google answers the question now. So what is your SEO retainer buying?
For fifteen years, veterinary SEO had one promise: rank for what pet owners ask, win the click, convert the visit. Google now answers the question before the click happens. That doesn't kill search. It moves the money — and most retainers haven't noticed.
Read the post →The $6,000 veterinary website, itemized.
A veterinary website routinely costs $3,000 to $6,000 to build, plus a monthly retainer to keep alive. The last essay asked why agencies hide their prices. This one asks a better question: what is the price for?
Read the post →Anyone can build a good website now. That was never the hard part.
The cost of producing a website just fell through the floor. A tool can write the code and put a fast, clean site online in an afternoon. This is real, and it changes things. It just doesn't change the thing most veterinary practices actually need.
Read the post →Demand capture vs. demand creation: where new patients come from.
Social media and Google Ads aren't competitors. They do two different jobs — and a practice that needs patients this quarter is usually hiring the wrong one.
Read the post →How the Machine Works
Why your PageSpeed score changed when your site didn't.
Run Google's speed test twice on the same page and you can get two different numbers. That is not a bug and it is not your site. Here is what the number is, why it moves, and how to read it so a single bad run never sells you a redesign.
Read the post →When exact match stops meaning exact.
You chose the words. You put brackets around them. Then the money went somewhere else. Here is the mechanism — documented, not conspiratorial — by which Google decides which of your keywords actually serves, and why the loose one keeps winning.
Read the post →Your reviews are part of your ad campaign.
The practice down the road isn't beating your ads with better ads. They're beating them at the moment the pet owner chooses — and that moment has stars on it.
Read the post →Facebook ads for vets: the client list is the whole game
Nobody's pet is sick on Facebook.
Read the post →Quality Score for vets: the grade that sets your click price
Google keeps a grade on your practice. One for every keyword you bid on, updated continuously, and it changes what you pay for every single click. Most practice owners have never looked at it — many don't know the column exists.
Read the post →"I searched for my own ad and it's not there." Here's why that's usually fine.
You typed your own service into Google to check your ad was running. Nothing showed up. Your stomach dropped — you're paying for this, and it looks broken.
Read the post →The referring vet will be an AI. Here's what survives.
Four dated predictions about how pet owners will find a practice — with a public scoring next year.
Read the post →Where your vet website quietly loses the patients your ads paid for.
You can see the click. You pay for the click. But everything that happens between that click and a booked patient is where the trail can break — and when it breaks, the booking still happens. You just can't see it. Here is every place that goes wrong, in the order a visitor hits them.
Read the post →The most valuable search a pet owner makes is the one you're least set up for.
A pet owner searching “vet open now” is the highest-intent search you'll ever see — and the Google Ads levers that serve them are usually switched off. Here's what to turn on.
Read the post →The slow-website tax: why Google charges you more per click.
A plain-English look at why a slow site quietly raises your ad costs — what makes a site slow, and what actually makes it fast.
Read the post →What Google's Recommendations tab is actually optimizing for.
Google's suggestions are built for the average advertiser across every industry on earth. Your practice is nowhere near that average.
Read the post →Why most veterinary practices can't prove their Google Ads work.
Most accounts I audit have tracking that's broken, incomplete, or counting the wrong thing — and the owners have no way to know.
Read the post →Google Ads for veterinary practices: the architecture most agencies get wrong.
A field guide for practice owners who suspect they're being overcharged — and the math behind why they probably are.
Read the post →The emergency vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The cat-only vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The mobile vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The hospice vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The urgent care vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The equine vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The exotic vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The holistic vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
The dermatology vet website: what it must do that a general-practice site doesn't.
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