At 2 a.m., an owner types "emergency vet near me" with a dog who won't stop vomiting. At 2 p.m., another owner types "vet near me" because the new kitten needs shots next week. Both searches mention a vet. Almost nothing else about them is the same.
One owner needs someone open right now, close by, who'll tell them what it will cost before they walk in. The other is comparing practices, reading reviews, and will book whenever is convenient. Put both in one campaign and they compete for the same budget, the same schedule and the same ads, and neither gets what it needs.
This chapter covers how to split them: two campaigns, each with its own budget, hours, radius, goal and ads, and how to decide which of them your practice should run at all.
A 2 A.M. Emergency and a Checkup Booking Want Different Things
Chapter 2 split owners by what they were trying to do. The search numbers show how big the emergency side is. Across the United States each month, according to Google's Keyword Planner:
- "emergency vet near me": 450,000 searches
- "animal hospital near me": 135,000
- "24 hour vet near me": 40,500
- "urgent care vet near me": 27,100
- "vet near me open now": 18,100
Those searches come at every hour, and they come from owners who will drive to whoever answers first. Wellness searches are steadier and slower: vaccines, dental cleanings, spay and neuter, a new-puppy visit. The owner has days, not minutes, and chooses on reviews, price and convenience.
Different intent means different settings. That's the case for two campaigns, and it starts with money.
In One Campaign, Emergency Spends the Budget First
A Google Ads budget belongs to a campaign, and every search in that campaign draws from it. When emergency and wellness keywords share a campaign, they share a budget.
Emergency searches are more numerous and arrive around the clock, so they reach the budget first. Google's own help page adds a wrinkle: on a busy day, a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget, balancing out over the month. A heavy emergency night can eat most of a day's money before the wellness searches of the next morning even start.
The fix is structural. Give emergency and wellness their own campaigns, and each gets a budget the other can't touch. You decide how the practice's money splits between them, instead of letting search volume decide for you.
Each Campaign Gets Its Own Hours, Radius and Bids
Once they're separate, every setting from Chapter 9 can fit the business it serves.
The emergency campaign runs around the clock if the practice is open around the clock, with its phone number showing the whole time. Its radius is wider, because an owner with a sick pet will drive further to a practice that's open. Its bids can rise at night and on holidays, when the need peaks and fewer competitors are open.
The wellness campaign follows office hours, with the call button switched off after closing as Chapter 9 described. Its radius is tighter, because owners choose a regular vet close to home. Its bids can favor the hours when bookings actually happen.
Each Campaign Counts a Different Win
The two campaigns shouldn't be judged the same way, and Google lets you set that up. Its campaign-specific conversion goals let a single campaign override the account's default goals and choose which actions it counts and bids toward.
For an emergency campaign, the win is a call. Chapter 1 set up call tracking so a call from an ad counts, and for emergencies it's the call that matters: almost nobody books an emergency visit through a web form. For a wellness campaign, the win is a booked appointment, whether that's an online booking, a completed form or a call about a routine visit.
When each campaign counts its own win, Smart Bidding learns what a good result looks like for that kind of owner, instead of blending two very different patterns into one average.
Splitting a Campaign That Already Runs Both
Many practices will read this with one campaign already live that mixes everything. Splitting it doesn't mean starting over.
First, sort the keywords. Anything with "emergency," "24 hour," "open now," "after hours" or "urgent" goes to the emergency side. Vaccines, dental cleaning, spay and neuter, wellness exams and new-patient searches stay with wellness. Searches like "vet near me" and "animal hospital near me" are the hard ones, since both kinds of owner type them. Put them where the practice can actually help at every hour it runs: in the emergency campaign for a 24/7 hospital, in wellness for a practice that closes at 6.
Second, build the emergency campaign as a new campaign with its own budget, schedule, radius and goal, and move the emergency keywords into it. Write its ads fresh, around the three questions in the next section, rather than copying wellness ads.
Third, add each campaign's keywords as negatives in the other. The wellness campaign blocks "emergency," "24 hour" and "open now." The emergency campaign blocks "vaccines," "dental cleaning" and "spay." Without those cross-negatives, both campaigns can bid on the same search and compete with each other, and the search terms report from Chapter 5 will show it.
Then give both campaigns a few weeks before judging them. Bidding strategies need time to learn from a new campaign's results, and the emergency campaign's calls will take a while to build a pattern.
Which Business Are You?
Not every practice should run both campaigns. The example market, Denver, shows four common models among practices that advertise:
- A 24/7 emergency chain, such as VEG, open around the clock, every day.
- Specialty hospitals with emergency service, such as Veterinary Specialists of the Rockies and Evolution Veterinary Specialists.
- Urgent care with set hours, such as Sploot, open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, and True Companions, with urgent care on two weekday afternoons.
- General practices with no emergency service.
The first three should run an emergency or urgent campaign, each matched to its real hours. A general practice with no emergency service shouldn't. It should add "emergency," "24 hour" and "after hours" to its negative keywords, as Chapter 5 set up, so its wellness ads don't show to owners who need help it can't give.
If a general practice does offer same-day sick visits, that's worth its own ad group, with honest wording like "Same-Day Sick Visits" rather than "Emergency." An owner who arrives expecting an ER and finds a general practice with a two-hour wait has been let down twice.
The Emergency Ad Answers Three Questions
An owner in an emergency reads an ad for three things: is it open now, how close is it, and what will this cost?
The first two come from settings. The schedule and call asset show the practice is open. Location assets and the radius show it's close. The third comes from the ad itself, and it's the one most emergency ads skip. "emergency vet cost" gets 1,600 searches a month in the US, and in the example market Google's own People Also Ask box showed the question "How much does an emergency vet visit cost?"
Chapter 8 found the answer owners respond to. They don't need the ad to quote a number. They need to know they'll hear the cost before anything happens. "Estimate Before Treatment" and "You Approve Every Step" answer the question the owner is too frightened to ask on the phone, and they belong in the headlines of every emergency ad group. If the practice publishes an exam fee, say so on the landing page, with its conditions.
You're Bidding Against Hospital Groups
Emergency and specialty care is where consolidation has gone furthest, and the auction reflects it. When Mars bought VCA, the Federal Trade Commission required it to sell 12 clinics "that provide specialty and emergency services." When JAB bought Ethos, a veterinary hospital group, in 2022, the FTC ordered it to divest clinics in several markets, including Denver. Chapter 7 found hospital groups behind 13 of the 31 vet ad accounts in the example market.
Groups bring big budgets, national brands and teams that run ads full time. An independent emergency hospital won't outspend them everywhere, and it doesn't need to. It can win on the three things in the previous section: it's closer to this owner, it answers the phone, and it says what it will cost. Local Services Ads, from Chapter 12, rank partly on answered calls, so reliable phones pay off twice.
Next: The Searches Nobody Wants to Make
Chapter 15 covers the hardest searches a practice will ever advertise for: euthanasia and end-of-life care. They cost less than "vet near me," they carry their own Google rules, and they need the most careful ads in the account.
The whole guide is on the Google Ads for Veterinarians guide home. And if you'd like help splitting an account into emergency and wellness campaigns, it's part of what our Google Ads management does for vet practices.
