We Analyzed 7.5 Million Plastic Surgery Searches, 41,412 Google Rankings and 1,479 Pages. Here's What Patients Actually Search For.

We pulled every U.S. Google ranking Ahrefs had on file for 35 leading American plastic surgery practices, plus page-level data for eight of them.

That gave us 41,412 rankings, 34,337 different patient searches, 7,507,410 searches a month and 1,479 pages.

Then we spent three days cutting it apart. Not to prove a point about SEO — to answer three questions a surgeon actually cares about: where is the demand, what does it cost to win, and how much of it is nobody taking?

Here is a summary of our key findings.

   4.2 million searches a month have no top-10 result from any of the 35 practices. That's 5,995 separate searches. Of the 100 biggest searches in the dataset, 79 are unclaimed.

   The median first-place ranking is on a search made 40 times a month. 70% of all #1 rankings sit on searches under 100 a month, and 34% of first-place rankings deliver no measurable traffic at all.

   There is a wall at about 500 searches a month. Below it, practices capture 8–10% of the demand. Above it: 2.9%, then 2.4%, then 1.6%, then 0.25%.

   A page ranking for 100+ search terms brings a median 978 visits a month. A page ranking for one brings one visit. Pages with 100+ terms are 2.1% of all pages and 47.8% of all traffic.

   The gap between a dead page and a 1,000-visit page is 9 links and 148 search terms. 57% of ranking pages have no links at all and they carry 34% of the traffic.

   AI Overviews appear on 54.1% of these rankings. At position #1, estimated clicks fall from 21.6% without one to 5.0% with one — a 69% cut.

   The map pack and the knowledge panel are the only two things on a results page that help you. Everything else — AI Overviews, ads, thumbnails, "People also ask", images, video, forums — cuts top-3 clicks by 24% to 69%.

   AI Overviews are heaviest on exactly the content agencies sell most: recovery questions 88%, comparison posts 82%, risk content 66%. Searches for a surgeon by city: 22%.

   Reddit and RealSelf show up on 54% of price searches and 50% of recovery searches.

   Google quotes cost pages inside its AI answers 55% of the time. It quotes homepages 6% of the time.

   Patients don't use surgical vocabulary — except when they do. "Face lift" outsearches "rhytidectomy" 939 to 1. But "breast augmentation" outsearches "boob job" nearly 3 to 1, and "rhinoplasty" beats "nose job".

   Keyword Difficulty tells you almost nothing about value. A ranking on a "hard" keyword (KD 51+) is worth $21.21 a month. A ranking on an "easy" one is worth $8.01. Practices win easy keywords because that's the only place they're trying.

   41% of these rankings are on searches no advertiser will pay a cent for. Those searches carry 22% of all the traffic in the study.

   89% of the non-branded, non-local keywords here are ranked for by exactly one of the 35 practices. Pick any two practices and they share a median of one keyword. 232 of the 595 possible pairs share nothing at all.

   Rank the 35 by total traffic and by traffic that could actually book a consultation, and you get two different lists. One practice moves from 4th to 1st. Another moves from 16th to last.

   The more traffic a practice has, the less of it can book a consultation (rho −0.64) and the less each visit is worth (rho −0.47).

   Laser and skin treatments have 75% of their demand unclaimed. Eyelid surgery, 73%. Liposuction, 63%. Rhinoplasty is the best-covered procedure in the specialty and it's still 31% unclaimed.

   Complication and revision searches: 289,110 a month, with an average of 1.09 practices ranking on any one of them.

Full method and limits at the bottom. 58 charts, 36 tables and 25 exhibits below.

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Part 1: The Demand Map

Every Procedure, Sized — and How Much Nobody Owns

We sorted all 34,337 searches into 15 procedure groups.

Procedure	Searches/mo	Difficulty	Avg CPC	Captured	Unclaimed	AI Overview	Forums	Biggest single search
Liposuction	512,010	0	$1.82	2.7%	63%	54%	41%	liposuction (83,000)
BBL / buttock	443,340	0	$0.98	3.3%	56%	63%	29%	what is a bbl (64,000)
Breast augmentation	344,370	1	$0.76	7.0%	36%	58%	19%	breast implants (21,000)
Botox & fillers	329,820	0	$1.59	2.5%	52%	56%	38%	sculptra (48,000)
Weight loss / GLP-1	314,910	12	$1.50	2.9%	54%	73%	17%	ozempic vulva (40,000)
Tummy tuck	289,940	0	$1.43	3.8%	55%	63%	50%	apron belly (64,000)
Facelift / neck lift	277,190	0	$0.76	4.0%	58%	49%	37%	jowls (42,000)
Laser & skin	268,730	0	$1.48	1.5%	75%	55%	32%	morpheus8 (54,000)
Breast lift / reduction	266,310	0	$0.81	3.8%	52%	52%	41%	breast reduction surgery (39,000)
Rhinoplasty	193,020	1	$1.30	8.7%	31%	48%	46%	nose job (17,000)
Eyelid / brow lift	168,880	0	$0.96	2.4%	73%	45%	40%	hooded eyes (68,000)
Gynecomastia	104,190	0	$0.94	3.2%	40%	44%	23%	puffy nipples (27,000)
Mommy makeover	74,800	0	$1.46	6.2%	46%	48%	28%	mommy makeover cost (13,000)
Labiaplasty / intimate	60,340	0	$1.13	2.6%	67%	45%	30%	penis enlargement surgery (18,000)
Fat transfer	39,620	0	$1.24	5.9%	25%	67%	35%	fat transfer (3,400)

Monthly searches by procedure, split into claimed and unclaimed demand.

Rhinoplasty is the best-covered procedure in American plastic surgery search. Even there, 31% of the demand has no top-10 result from anyone in the study.

Laser and skin is the worst: 202,000 searches a month unclaimed out of 268,730. That's the category most surgical practices treat as an add-on.

Key takeaway: Find your procedures. The unclaimed column is the share of your own market currently going to nobody.

Where Each Procedure's Traffic Actually Comes From

Same procedures, cut by what the patient was asking.

Share of each procedure’s captured traffic by what the patient asked.

Read across the rows and the differences are large. Eyelid surgery is a proof market — 54% of its captured traffic comes from before-and-after searches. Facelift is a price market — 38% from cost searches. Gynecomastia is almost purely educational at 90%. Rhinoplasty is the only procedure where surgeon-selection searches carry a serious share of traffic at 18%.

Key takeaway: There is no single content plan for "plastic surgery." A facelift practice and an eyelid practice are in two different businesses as far as search is concerned.

The Seven Things a Patient Wants to Know

We sorted every one of the 34,337 searches into the seven questions a cosmetic patient asks before booking.

What the patient wants	Example	Distinct searches	Searches/mo	Share of demand	Captured	Difficulty	AI Overview	Forums
Procedure	"what is a tummy tuck"	19,830	5,262,290	70.1%	3.0%	0	59%	22%
Who	"best plastic surgeon in Dallas"	4,020	356,840	4.8%	11.5%	18	22%	22%
Proof	"tummy tuck before and after"	3,244	725,600	9.7%	4.6%	0	51%	26%
Price	"how much is a tummy tuck"	3,644	589,540	7.9%	3.1%	0	49%	54%
Risk	"tummy tuck gone wrong"	1,334	301,850	4.0%	3.3%	0	66%	43%
Recovery	"tummy tuck recovery time"	865	99,190	1.3%	3.3%	0	88%	50%
Compare	"lipo vs tummy tuck"	1,400	172,100	2.3%	5.0%	0	82%	36%

70% of all patient search volume is "what is this procedure." The practices capture 3.0% of it. 4.8% is "who should I pick." They capture 11.5% — nearly four times the rate, and it's the only stage with real difficulty (median 18, against 0 everywhere else).

Key takeaway: Procedure-education demand is enormous, free to rank for, and mostly answered by a machine before anyone clicks. Surgeon-selection demand is small, genuinely hard, and it's the only stage where a search means a person deciding who operates.

How Patients Phrase It

"Before and after" is the single biggest modifier in the specialty at 643,700 searches a month — bigger than cost, bigger than "near me", bigger than everything.

How the patient phrases it	Distinct searches	Searches/mo	Captured	Difficulty	Avg CPC	AI Overview	Forums	Unclaimed
before and after	2,512	643,700	4.4%	0	$0.87	53%	30%	15%
cost / price	3,371	565,010	3.1%	0	$1.20	50%	54%	15%
surgeon / doctor	2,812	227,730	14.3%	42	$1.55	20%	18%	13%
removal / explant	787	193,800	2.3%	0	$1.52	59%	47%	22%
non-surgical	801	161,840	4.0%	0	$0.68	67%	25%	15%
male / men	1,018	146,110	3.7%	0	$0.98	56%	19%	15%
best / top	1,732	144,720	11.7%	29	$1.53	33%	38%	15%
photos / pictures	658	80,190	5.6%	0	$0.58	22%	1%	13%
near me	744	77,310	4.1%	0	$1.67	10%	3%	36%
recovery / healing	650	76,760	3.8%	0	$0.49	78%	49%	20%
revision / botched	415	63,800	6.8%	0	$0.98	46%	42%	16%
vs / compare	410	49,220	5.1%	0	$1.12	87%	40%	14%
how long	266	41,320	2.0%	0	$0.83	93%	46%	20%
risk / complication	196	27,080	3.2%	3	$0.72	82%	60%	20%
insurance / covered	131	16,830	2.3%	0	$1.61	59%	72%	15%
financing / payment	188	15,730	4.2%	0	$1.96	46%	21%	29%
clinic / center	103	9,510	9.2%	23	$1.64	6%	1%	28%
reviews	171	5,700	14.9%	0	$0.78	30%	62%	9%
cheap / affordable	89	4,370	5.0%	1	$1.73	37%	43%	24%
worth it	13	1,070	5.5%	0	$1.45	69%	100%	15%

Key takeaway: "Before and after" and "cost" are two-thirds of how patients express intent, and they're the two page types most practices treat as afterthoughts.

Patients Don't Use Your Words — Except When They Do

This one surprised us.

Plain-English term	Searches/mo	Medical term	Searches/mo	Plain-English is bigger by
face lift	37,560	rhytidectomy	40	939.0×
butt lift	44,510	gluteal augmentation	170	261.8×
neck lift	91,230	platysmaplasty	560	162.9×
breast lift	114,120	mastopexy	3,100	36.8×
tummy tuck	168,090	abdominoplasty	7,220	23.3×
man boobs	28,490	gynecomastia	28,710	0.99× (medical wins)
nose job	79,420	rhinoplasty	97,180	0.81× (medical wins)
chin surgery	9,710	genioplasty	16,190	0.59× (medical wins)
eyelid surgery	8,300	blepharoplasty	15,420	0.53× (medical wins)
arm lift	9,650	brachioplasty	26,240	0.36× (medical wins)
ear surgery	4,840	otoplasty	13,640	0.35× (medical wins)
boob job	47,580	breast augmentation	136,950	0.34× (medical wins)

"Face lift" outsearches "rhytidectomy" 939 to 1. "Butt lift" beats "gluteal augmentation" 262 to 1. "Neck lift" beats "platysmaplasty" 163 to 1.

But it flips. "Breast augmentation" outsearches "boob job" nearly 3 to 1. "Rhinoplasty" beats "nose job." "Brachioplasty" beats "arm lift" 2.7 to 1. "Otoplasty" beats "ear surgery" 2.8 to 1.

Some medical terms have entered ordinary vocabulary and some haven't. Writing "abdominoplasty" as your page title costs you 23× the audience. Writing "boob job" costs you two-thirds of it.

Key takeaway: Don't guess. Check the actual term before you title the page — the rule reverses depending on the procedure.

Every Question, and Who Answers It

Search starts with	Rankings	Searches/mo	CTR	AI Overview	Cited in the AI answer	Forums
"how to…"	762	304,000	0.83%	91%	26%	54%
"how much…"	1,090	252,640	1.78%	42%	46%	61%
"what is…"	498	217,300	0.90%	92%	25%	12%
"what…"	614	127,400	1.93%	87%	22%	23%
"how…"	308	56,200	1.75%	75%	20%	41%
"how long…"	273	44,580	1.78%	93%	24%	46%
"does…"	262	42,470	2.10%	89%	16%	61%
"can…"	442	28,780	3.63%	88%	28%	68%
"how many…"	113	22,450	1.77%	82%	18%	40%
"why…"	186	20,550	2.32%	84%	22%	44%
"is…"	204	19,100	3.04%	85%	28%	72%
"do…"	125	13,940	3.02%	82%	20%	65%
"when…"	155	7,320	4.56%	92%	23%	56%
"are…"	98	5,550	4.50%	88%	23%	43%
"will…"	44	1,850	4.38%	75%	18%	66%
"where…"	47	1,800	2.56%	28%	23%	13%
"should…"	14	930	4.41%	100%	29%	57%
"which…"	21	690	7.25%	90%	16%	24%

"How long" questions carry an AI Overview 93% of the time. "What is" 92%. "How to" 91%.

"How much" is the exception at 42% — and it's the second-largest question category at 252,640 searches a month. It's also where a practice's page gets cited inside the AI answer most often, at 46%.

Key takeaway: Google will answer almost every question a patient asks. The one it still hands off is the price question.

Patient Segments, Sized

Patient segment	Distinct searches	Searches/mo	Captured	Median CPC	Difficulty	AI Overview	Unclaimed
male-focused	1,325	217,520	3.9%	$1.56	0	51%	15%
post-pregnancy	522	110,340	6.0%	$1.66	0	47%	16%
post-weight-loss	356	62,620	2.1%	$1.17	2	80%	22%
teen / young	64	39,690	1.7%	$0.95	0	33%	17%
celebrity	251	37,350	3.9%	$0.86	1	53%	18%
revision-seeking	311	34,840	8.2%	$1.71	0	41%	16%
ethnic-specific	117	11,560	4.8%	$1.53	0	29%	9%
over-50	23	2,310	3.7%	$0.61	0	79%	26%

Male-focused searches are 217,520 a month with 3.9% captured. Post-pregnancy, 110,340. Revision-seeking is small at 34,840 but has the highest capture rate of any segment at 8.2% — meaning the practices that do address it get results.

Key takeaway: Male demand is the largest under-served segment in the specialty by a distance.

The Metro Map

Metro	Searches/mo	Distinct searches	Captured	Difficulty	Median CPC	Map pack shown	Top-3 rate	Unclaimed
Los Angeles	93,800	723	20%	1	$2.61	74%	56%	5%
New York	65,950	591	10%	2	$2.53	73%	27%	13%
Miami	53,510	437	7%	3	$2.09	64%	27%	19%
Houston	45,780	403	12%	0	$2.49	55%	56%	8%
Atlanta	40,370	485	18%	0	$1.83	65%	54%	6%
Phoenix	28,970	340	9%	1	$2.93	80%	25%	12%
Philadelphia	25,930	265	16%	0	$2.08	72%	37%	2%
Seattle	25,860	259	14%	0	$1.95	72%	41%	11%
Charlotte	24,590	224	17%	2	$2.00	77%	38%	8%
Dallas	24,330	245	11%	14	$2.17	80%	38%	12%
Chicago	22,840	213	9%	0	$1.86	66%	34%	8%
San Diego	20,460	176	19%	0	$2.85	73%	36%	17%
Orange County	19,790	199	8%	1	$3.46	80%	18%	8%
Denver	17,460	239	21%	0	$2.29	66%	55%	8%
Washington Dc	16,390	167	15%	0	$2.31	80%	44%	4%
Austin	16,010	146	12%	0	$2.43	60%	33%	15%
Las Vegas	12,960	158	9%	1	$2.08	71%	28%	13%
Boston	11,530	112	10%	0	$2.26	54%	42%	17%
Nashville	11,230	118	20%	30	$2.42	81%	44%	7%
San Francisco	8,390	88	7%	0	$2.56	73%	18%	22%
San Antonio	2,500	35	6%	0	$1.87	40%	23%	11%

Miami is the softest big market in the country — 53,510 searches a month, 7% captured, despite housing some of the most famous names in the specialty. New York and Chicago follow at 10% and 9%.

Dallas is the hardest. Median difficulty 14, against 0–3 nearly everywhere else. Denver and Atlanta have difficulty 0 and 18–21% already captured.

A map pack sits on 55–80% of these searches, which is why every capture number is lower than it looks like it should be.

Key takeaway: Find your metro. Under 12% captured means the local demand in your city is mostly unanswered.

Part 2: What a Ranking Is Actually Worth

A First-Place Ranking Is Smaller Than It Sounds

We found 7,714 first-place rankings across the 35 practices.

The median #1 ranking is on a search made 40 times a month. Seven in ten are on searches under 100 a month. Only 148 of the 7,714 — under 2% — are on a search made 1,000 times or more.

And 34% of first-place rankings deliver no measurable traffic at all.

Position band	Rankings	Share of rankings	Traffic	Share of traffic	Searches/mo	Difficulty
1-3	13,224	31.9%	156,130	57.1%	1,598,340	0
4-10	19,864	48.0%	103,791	38.0%	2,234,900	0
11-20	2,730	6.6%	12,270	4.5%	2,044,720	1
21-50	760	1.8%	1,089	0.4%	1,612,290	2

Key takeaway: A practice can hold a thousand first-place rankings and still have a quiet phone. Ask what the ranking is for before you celebrate the position.

What One Top-3 Ranking Is Worth, By Procedure

We took every top-3 ranking and calculated what it would cost to buy those clicks through Google Ads.

Procedure	Top-3 rankings in study	Avg visits/mo per ranking	Avg CPC	Value of one top-3 ranking
Weight loss / GLP-1	217	20.4	$1.53	$44.77
Mommy makeover	194	17.2	$1.61	$39.64
Rhinoplasty	824	14.7	$1.39	$34.14
Botox & fillers	379	11.2	$1.62	$30.48
Tummy tuck	601	9.7	$1.68	$25.53
Laser & skin	189	8.3	$1.28	$21.13
Facelift / neck lift	409	17.4	$0.81	$18.28
Eyelid / brow lift	133	19.0	$0.77	$17.19
Gynecomastia	96	12.1	$1.13	$17.08
Breast lift / reduction	417	11.2	$0.85	$16.05
Liposuction	1,051	6.9	$1.69	$15.24
Breast augmentation	1,003	13.1	$0.77	$12.39
BBL / buttock	723	9.3	$1.03	$12.17
Labiaplasty / intimate	68	11.4	$1.06	$10.97
Fat transfer	106	9.8	$1.20	$10.36

Weight loss and GLP-1 rankings are worth $44.77 a month each. Breast augmentation — the third-largest category by volume — is worth $12.39. Lots of searches, cheap clicks.

Key takeaway: Two practices can hold the same number of top-3 rankings and be worth three times as much to each other.

41% of These Rankings Are Worth Nothing to an Advertiser

What an advertiser pays per click	Rankings	Share of rankings	Share of traffic	Monthly ad value	AI Overview
$0	16,937	40.9%	21.8%	$0	54%
<$0.50	2,777	6.7%	10.5%	$5,318	80%
$0.50-1	3,083	7.4%	6.9%	$15,336	64%
$1-2	10,803	26.1%	31.8%	$132,401	57%
$2-3	5,247	12.7%	17.5%	$115,584	42%
$3-5	2,105	5.1%	9.4%	$95,466	29%
$5+	460	1.1%	2.1%	$42,881	31%

16,937 rankings — 41% of the study — are on searches where the cost per click is $0. No advertiser will bid on them. They carry 22% of all the traffic in the study.

The $1–$3 bands are 39% of rankings and 49% of traffic, and nearly all of the commercial value.

Search	Searches/mo	Cost per click	Difficulty	Best position held
"plastic surgery disaster"	40	$66.77	5	9
"cpt code for panniculectomy"	200	$38.94	4	1
"panniculectomy cpt code"	600	$38.94	4	1
"abdominoplasty orange county"	70	$33.25	0	6
"how many units of botox go in the forehead"	20	$32.43	0	10
"carolina facial plastic surgery"	90	$30.95	41	6
"eyelift new york"	70	$27.42	0	—
"liposuction upper east side"	200	$26.96	24	3
"man with a bbl"	150	$22.71	0	3
"laser hair removal for men chicago"	100	$22.27	3	2
"breast revision scottsdale"	90	$20.74	0	8
"plastic surgery paradise valley"	80	$20.73	45	8
"restylane philadelphia"	150	$18.76	0	6
"breast augmentation surgeon houston"	200	$18.25	55	5
"semaglutide men"	40	$18.17	34	—
"breast revision phoenix"	90	$17.55	0	3
"butt lift in houston"	200	$17.43	0	2
"is temple filler dangerous"	200	$17.32	0	2
"bbl guy"	200	$17.18	0	4
"semaglutide colorado"	80	$16.27	10	5

Key takeaway: A fifth of the organic traffic in this specialty is on searches the market has priced at zero.

Keyword Difficulty Scores Are Nearly Useless

46% of all traffic in this study comes from keywords rated zero difficulty. 68% comes from keywords rated 5 or below.

The obvious read is "easy keywords are where the money is." The data says otherwise.

Difficulty score	Rankings	Share of rankings	Share of all traffic	Avg visits per ranking	Avg CPC	Value per ranking
0	21,460	52%	46%	6.6	$0.98	$8.01
1-5	8,754	21%	22%	7.8	$1.03	$10.20
6-10	2,052	5%	5%	7.7	$0.86	$9.32
11-20	2,140	5%	5%	8.0	$0.90	$8.57
21-30	1,779	4%	4%	7.4	$1.10	$10.24
31-50	2,493	6%	7%	8.9	$1.29	$12.91
51+	2,734	7%	10%	11.2	$1.59	$21.21

Average visits per ranking is flat across every difficulty band — 6.6 at KD 0, 7.8 at KD 1–5, 7.4 at KD 21–30 — and highest at KD 51+, at 11.2. In advertising value, a hard-keyword ranking is worth $21.21 a month against $8.01 for an easy one.

Key takeaway: The difficulty score tells you how crowded a search is, not what it's worth. 46% of the specialty's traffic sits at difficulty zero because that's where everyone parked.