Negative keywords filter non-patient searches that waste your ad budget. Most medical practices are losing 15 to 30 percent of their Google Ads spend to non-patient clicks that a good negative keyword list would have prevented.
Job seekers searching for positions at medical practices, medical students and researchers looking for academic information, people searching for insurance billing and coding information, competitors doing market research, and patients researching alternatives to your treatment type. All of these searches trigger medical ads and consume budget without converting to patients.
Job-related terms like jobs, careers, employment, hiring, salary. Academic terms like medical school, training, course, certification, study. Insurance terms like billing code, CPT, ICD, reimbursement. DIY terms like home, DIY, how to do at home. And competitor-research terms like reviews followed by competitor names if you are not targeting those terms.
If any of this sounds like your practice, start by checking whether AI search can see your site.
Start with a foundational list covering common non-patient search patterns, then review your Search Terms report weekly for the first 90 days and add any non-patient searches that appeared. This iterative approach builds a comprehensive negative keyword list over time that is specific to your market and specialty.
Practices that implement a comprehensive negative keyword strategy typically see 15 to 30 percent of previously wasted spend captured for productive use, either by reducing total spend at the same conversion volume or by maintaining the same spend while increasing conversions. This is often the fastest payback SEO-adjacent tactic available for active Google Ads accounts.
Uday Rajaram is the founder of Medical Marketing Firm. He has spent 22 years in digital marketing, starting as a developer in New York, and has run Google Ads, SEO, and AI search programs for more than 100 medical and cosmetic practices. He is the author of Earned Traffic.
Every guide on this site is written or reviewed by him. The numbers come from our own client accounts and published case studies, never estimates. How we source and update our content · udayrajaram.com
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