A routine eye exam and a LASIK consultation can come from the same search box on the same afternoon. One is a recurring visit, often covered by a vision plan. The other is an elective, self pay procedure worth many times more. An account that bids on both the same way overpays for one and underfunds the other.
Most of the waste comes from treating exams, eyewear and surgery as one product.
Eye exam searches are cheap and plentiful. Refractive and cataract surgery searches are fewer and worth far more. Together, the platform chases the cheap conversions and the surgical side goes unfunded.
Glasses and contact lens searches are crowded with national retailers and online stores. A practice paying for those clicks is buying shoppers comparing frame prices, not patients.
A LASIK or cataract consult is the start of a decision, not the end. When the account only counts consult requests, it cannot tell which campaigns produced surgery.
A vision plan patient and a self pay surgery patient have different economics. Without that split in the account, bids follow the average and suit neither.
Built around the services where the practice has capacity and margin.
Eye exams, contact lens fittings, dry eye care, LASIK and cataract surgery run separately, each with its own search terms, bids and page.
Surgical consults that became procedures are matched to the campaign and keyword that produced them, so budget follows surgery and not enquiries.
Frame and contact lens shopping terms are limited or excluded, so the budget is not spent on online eyewear shoppers.
Each call traced to its keyword and marked by outcome, without sending patient details to the ad platforms.
Pages that explain the exam or the procedure, who performs it, the price range or financing and how to book. See landing pages and websites.
Exams, fittings and surgical consults reported separately for each office.
Ads are written inside the healthcare policies of Google and the health rules of Meta. Google treats surgical procedures as a sensitive health category, so audiences built from your own patient lists or site visitors cannot be used for them.
Average cost per click on Google in the United States. A LASIK search costs four to five times a search for an eye doctor, which is why the two need separate bids.
| Search term | Monthly searches | Average CPC |
|---|---|---|
| eye doctor near me | 450,000 | $5.93 |
| optometrist near me | 301,000 | $4.66 |
| eye exam near me | 246,000 | $9.22 |
| vision test near me | 201,000 | $9.77 |
| lasik eye surgery | 90,500 | $24.90 |
| lasik eye surgery cost | 49,500 | $13.76 |
| pediatric eye doctor near me | 18,100 | $7.20 |
Source: Google Ads data for the United States via DataForSEO, read on October 15, 2026. National averages for the last twelve months.
I have not published an eye care case, and I would rather say so than borrow one. This is what is real.
Different industry, included because the numbers are public and verifiable. Roughly $20K per month in Google Ads spend, in a market with $45 to $80 CPCs. Read the case.
I have also worked in paid media in healthcare. Nothing from that work is published on this site. No employer is named, and there are no budgets, results or internal details.
What carries over is the method. Conversions are defined as booked work, calls are tracked to the keyword, and bids are set against what a customer is worth.
I go through the account, the tracking and the path a patient takes from search to appointment and tell you what is broken. The findings are yours whether or not we keep working together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy and landing pages built around how patients actually search, and around what the platform rules allow.
Weekly optimisation against booked appointments rather than form fills, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Longer reads on this topic from the blog.
Optometry and ophthalmology practices with room in the schedule.
Not a fit. Online eyewear stores, which is ecommerce and a different kind of account.
No. Optometry ads usually aim at exams, contact lens fittings and recurring patients. Ophthalmology ads aim at fewer, higher value searches for surgery such as LASIK and cataracts. A practice that offers both runs them as separate campaigns with separate budgets.
In October 2026 the United States average was $5.93 for eye doctor near me, $9.22 for eye exam near me and $24.90 for lasik eye surgery. These are national averages, and your market can sit above or below them.
Rarely, and only with local intent. Most of those searches come from people comparing prices at retailers and online stores. The budget usually does more on exams and fittings, which need an appointment.
Not with lists built from your own visitors or patients. Google treats surgical procedures as a sensitive health category and does not allow those audiences, and Meta limits the data health advertisers can send back. Campaigns rely on search intent, location and the page itself.
I have not published an eye care case, so I will not claim one. I have also worked in paid media in healthcare, and the published numbers on this site come from a home services company in Houston. The method is the same one, applied to exams and surgical consults.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
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