Platelet-rich plasma injections outdraw even knee replacement in Google searches: about 90,500 a month for "prp injection" against 49,500 for "knee replacement surgery." Stem cell knee injections draw a smaller but steady stream. Six of the 11 orthopedic practice websites we profiled for this guide mention PRP, biologics or regenerative medicine somewhere.
Google won't let any of those practices advertise them. Not in ad text, not on the page an ad sends people to, and not by rewording them as "biologics."
That sounds like a dead end, and practices treat it like one: either they quietly run PRP ads until Google catches them, or they give up on the whole group of searches. Both are mistakes. Google bans promoting the treatment. It doesn't ban treating the knee, and the knee is what the patient came about.
Patients Search "PRP Injection" 90,500 Times a Month. No Orthopedic Ad Can Answer It.
The demand is large. Nationwide, Keyword Planner puts "prp injection" at roughly 90,500 searches every month. "PRP injections near me" and "PRP knee injection" each draw about 5,400. "Regenerative medicine near me" draws 2,900, and "stem cell knee injection" 1,900. In our example market, Nashville, the keyword list from Chapter 5 held 436 PRP, stem cell and regenerative ideas, most of them pulled from a single regenerative clinic's website.
The same data holds a different kind of number worth noticing. "Gel injection for knee," the hyaluronic acid injection many orthopedic practices offer for arthritis, draws about 22,200 searches a month. That one isn't on Google's banned list. More on it below. Your own market is likely to show the same shape at a smaller scale: a long list of regenerative searches you can't use, and a shorter list of condition and injection searches you can.
Google Bans Promoting the Treatment, Not Treating the Knee
Google's policy on speculative and experimental medical treatments names the therapies directly: stem cell therapy, cellular therapy, gene therapy and similar forms of regenerative medicine, and platelet-rich plasma. Ads can't promote them.
There are two exceptions, and an orthopedic practice fits neither. One is for a manufacturer that holds FDA approval for its own cell or gene product and advertises that product. A practice performing PRP isn't that company. The second covers ads that are purely educational, such as academic papers and medical conference tickets. An ad asking a patient to book a PRP appointment isn't educational.
The line is easier to see in actual headlines. "PRP Injections for Knee Pain" promotes the treatment. So does "Regenerative Knee Therapy" and "Heal Your Knee Without Surgery Using Your Own Blood." "Knee Arthritis? See a Knee Specialist" doesn't, and neither does "Every Knee Pain Option, Explained." The first group sells a specific therapy Google has named. The second sells an appointment with a surgeon who will talk through what fits.
Rewording doesn't help. Calling it "orthobiologics," "biologic injections" or "regenerative therapy" changes nothing, as we read it, and neither does switching to amniotic, umbilical cord, exosome or bone marrow concentrate injections: each is the same banned category wearing a new name, and Google's review covers the landing page as well as the ad.
The penalty works the way Chapter 10 described. Google sends a warning at least 7 days before suspending the account. That's more forgiving than the opioid rule from Chapter 13, and it's also why practices get complacent. An account running PRP ads without trouble usually just hasn't been flagged yet.
Five States Now Require a Notice on Stem Cell Ads. Google's Rule Doesn't Move.
Part of the confusion comes from state law, which has been moving in the other direction. Several states now let physicians offer some stem cell or regenerative treatments that the FDA hasn't approved, provided their advertising carries a required notice.
Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Georgia and Vermont each require the notice in ads for these treatments, typically a set statement that the therapy isn't FDA approved. California requires a similar notice in the office and in writing, though its statute doesn't mention ads. Arizona passed a similar bill in 2026, and it was vetoed. Your own state may have passed something since this was written.
None of it changes Google. A state notice governs what a practice must say when it advertises a treatment the state allows. Google's policy governs whether Google will run the ad at all, and its only exception is for FDA-approved products promoted by the company that holds the approval. If you practice in one of these states and offer regenerative treatment, you need the notice in your other advertising and on the pages that promote it. You still can't run the treatment in a Google ad.
The Knee Behind a PRP Search Is Fair Game
Here's the part practices miss. Nobody wakes up wanting platelet-rich plasma. They want their knee to stop hurting, they've read about PRP, and they're searching for the treatment they heard about. The knee is still there.
Everything about the knee is advertisable. Knee arthritis, cartilage wear, meniscus problems, knee pain that hasn't responded to rest: an orthopedic practice can advertise evaluating and treating all of it. So can the treatments that aren't on Google's banned list, described in plain terms:
- Physical therapy and bracing, which nobody restricts.
- Steroid injections, described generically. Specific drug names such as Kenalog and Depo-Medrol are on Google's prescription drug list, so, as Chapter 13 explained, they can appear in ads only where local law allows and can't be targeted as keywords without a certification a practice doesn't have.
- Gel injections. Hyaluronic acid injections are regulated by the FDA as devices, and the common brand names aren't on Google's prescription drug list. In our reading, a knee gel injection is advertisable the way any other FDA-approved treatment is. Confirm with a Google representative before building a campaign around it.
- Knee replacement, which the rest of this guide covers.
One honest limit: Keyword Planner is little help in sizing this side. Asked about "knee pain treatment," "knee pain doctor," "knee injection," "knee doctor near me" or plain "knee pain," it returned no volume at all, and "knee arthritis doctor" showed about 170 searches a month. In the example-market list, 70 knee condition ideas added up to about 750 searches. That doesn't mean nobody searches for knee pain, and it doesn't mean the searches are cheap or expensive. It means the planner won't tell you before launch. Chapter 6 found the same thing: the injury and symptom searches show up in the search terms report once Exploration is running, not in the planner beforehand.
Knee Pain Clicks Belong on a Condition Page. PRP Stays Off the Ad Path.
The ad is only half of what Google reviews. The page it sends people to is the other half, so where a knee pain ad lands decides whether it stays on the right side of the rule.
Build a knee condition page, or use the knee arthritis page you already have, that walks through the options Google allows: therapy, bracing, steroid injections, gel injections and, when it's time, replacement. Point the knee pain ad group there.
A good condition page does the job the PRP searcher came for without the word. It explains what knee arthritis is and how the practice decides what to try first. It lists the options in the order a surgeon usually works through them. It says plainly who tends to need what, and it ends with a way to book a consult where a surgeon can talk about everything, including treatments the page doesn't list. That's also the page Chapter 8 would want: the explanation patients praise, written down.
Give PRP and any regenerative treatment a page of their own. If a state where you practice requires a notice on that treatment's advertising, that page is the likeliest place the notice belongs, because it's the page promoting the treatment. Ask the practice's counsel how your state reads it. Leave it on the site for patients who come looking, link to it from the condition page if you like, and keep it out of every ad: no Search ad group points to it, and it goes on the Performance Max URL exclusion list from Chapter 10.
What we couldn't find is whether a single mention of PRP in a list of options on an otherwise advertisable page draws a disapproval in practice. Google's policy text doesn't say, and we'd rather tell you that than guess. The cautious move is to keep the advertised page free of it. If you want the mention, test it on one ad group and watch the policy status before rolling it out.
Broad Match Will Put Your Knee Ad on PRP Searches Unless You Block Them
The last risk comes from your own campaigns. Exploration runs on broad match, and Performance Max chooses its own searches. A keyword like "knee injection" or "knee arthritis treatment" is related to "PRP knee injection" and "stem cell knee injection," so broad match can show your knee ad on exactly the searches this chapter says you can't answer.
The ad may be perfectly compliant. It's still a click from someone looking for a treatment you're not advertising, landing on a page that doesn't mention it. That's money spent on a patient who leaves.
Block them. Add these to the shared negative list from Chapter 5, so every campaign uses it, including Performance Max:
- prp, platelet, platelet rich plasma
- stem cell, stem cells, regenerative
- exosome, exosomes, amniotic, bone marrow
- orthobiologic, orthobiologics, biologic injection
Performance Max needs the same list. Google lets you add negative keywords to Performance Max at the campaign or account level, including shared lists, and they apply to its Search and Shopping inventory. That covers the searches that matter here. Add the list to Performance Max the day it launches, not after the first PRP search shows up in its reports.
Then read the search terms report the way Chapter 6 laid out, and add any new rewording the week it appears. And if AI Max ever comes on, the same words belong in its text guidelines, from Chapter 13, so it doesn't write them into a headline from your PRP page.
Next: Patients Search for Surgeons by Name
The searches in this chapter are about treatments. Chapter 15 turns to the searches that are about people: patients typing a surgeon's name, and why every surgeon deserves a brand campaign and a page of their own.
The guide home has the full sequence.
For orthopedic groups that hand us their Google Ads management, the PRP and regenerative pages are identified and fenced off before launch, and the knee pain searches go to a page Google will let the ad use.
