Google Ads for home care agencies: clients, Medicare and caregivers in separate lanes

A home care agency sells hours of care to a family, and it can only sell the hours it can staff. The searcher is often an adult child, the payer may be the family, an insurer or the VA, and the same agency is hiring caregivers every month.

Most agencies need two or three campaigns that never share a budget: one for private-pay families, one for caregiver hiring, and, if the agency is Medicare-certified, one for home health. Each has a different payer, a different person searching and a different conversion to count.

A private-pay client is worth their weekly hours × your hourly rate × the weeks they stay × your gross margin. At the 2025 national median of $35 an hour (CareScout) and assumed figures of 26 weeks, a 35% margin, 1 in 5 inquiries signing and 8% of clicks inquiring, a 4-hour weekly client can pay about $20 a click, while a 20-hour client can pay about $102.

Home care clicks are cheaper than most service trades. In Sarasota and Manatee counties, Florida, the top-of-page bid for "home care near me" ran $4.52 to $22.96 and for "in home care" $6.51 to $17.42 (Google Keyword Planner, October 17, 2026). That is below the 20-hour break-even above, so for most agencies the limit is staffing, not the click.

Medicare does not pay for 24-hour care, homemaker services or custodial care when that is the only care needed (Medicare.gov, November 2026), so non-medical care is paid by the family, by long-term care insurance or by the VA. Long-term care policies that qualify under federal tax law pay once a licensed practitioner certifies that the person can't do 2 of 6 daily activities for at least 90 days, or needs supervision for severe cognitive impairment (26 U.S.C. 7702B).

Yes, but the ad cannot offer patients anything of value to choose you. Under Social Security Act §1128A(a)(5), a gift that is likely to influence a Medicare or Medicaid beneficiary's choice of provider can bring civil money penalties, and the OIG treats only items worth no more than $15 each and $75 a year per patient as nominal (OIG policy statement, December 7, 2016). Cash and gift cards never qualify.

Yes, as its own campaign. Home health and personal care aides earned a median $17.21 an hour in 2025, and the BLS projects about 760,500 openings a year through 2035. With caregiver turnover at 75% in the 2025 Activated Insights benchmark (HomeCare Magazine, August 2025), most agencies are hiring all year, and every client you sign needs staffed hours.

Not today. Google's Local Services Ads category list includes child care and several health professions, but no home care, senior care or caregiver category (Google Local Services Help, checked November 1, 2026). A home care agency reaches families through Search ads and its Google Business Profile.

Start from the hours you can staff, not the budget: set the minimum shift, target the area your caregivers can reach, and count a signed care plan with its weekly hours.

In Sarasota, Florida, "home care Sarasota" got about 480 U.S. searches a month but only 170 from Sarasota and Manatee counties (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026), which shows how often the family searching lives somewhere else.

Typical U.S. agency pricing is a flat retainer of $1,000 to $5,000 a month for small and mid-sized accounts, or 10% to 20% of ad spend, most often 15%, plus setup fees of $2,500 to $10,000 (Eloari, main page, November 2026). Eloari charges a flat fee from $900 a month, with no setup fee, no percentage and no markup on media.

Tracking rules for medical providers, a Florida market where 38% of residents are 65 or older, and how to count a signed client instead of a form.