Google Ads' Australian healthcare policy tightens — LegitScript certification, no prescription-drug terms, and a YMYL ranking squeeze
Google's Healthcare and Medicines policy update for Australia, effective 23 May 2024, requires online pharmacies and telemedicine providers advertising into Australia to be certified through LegitScript's Healthcare Merchant Certification Program, or to meet specific state or territory pharmacy registration requirements. Prescription drug terms cannot appear in ad copy or on the destination page. Existing online-pharmacy advertisers had a 90-day re-certification window. Google then reorganised the broader policy in December 2024 and shipped further updates in June, July and October 2025. The category is being progressively boxed in.
- Telehealth
- Medical
For online pharmacies, registration with the relevant pharmacy authority in NSW, SA, Tasmania, Victoria or WA is accepted. Pharmacies in Queensland, NT and ACT must be owned or controlled by a pharmacist registered with the Pharmacy Board of Australia. Telemedicine providers advertising to Australia must be verified by LegitScript's Healthcare Merchant Certification Program, a third-party body that covers online pharmacies, telemedicine, addiction services and others. Ads targeting Australia cannot use prescription drug terms in ad copy or on the destination page.
Existing certified online-pharmacy advertisers had 90 days from 23 May 2024 to re-apply for certification under the new framework. After that window, ineligibility kicked in. The policy reorganisation in December 2024 added new examples and clarified scope, and further updates landed in June 2025, July 2025 and October 2025.
In parallel, the organic-search side has been moving against thin clinical content. In March 2024, Google folded the Helpful Content System into its core ranking system and added Experience to E-A-T, making the framework E-E-A-T. Third-party SEO analysis citing Sistrix data reported a roughly 30% average visibility decrease for YMYL sites following the update — Your Money or Your Life sites covering health, finance and legal. The figure is industry analysis rather than Google's own data, but it tracks the experience clinical operators are reporting.
Stacked together, the changes describe a category being systematically boxed in. Paid acquisition needs LegitScript certification or state-level pharmacy registration plus prescription-drug-term-free copy. Organic visibility for clinical content is conditional on demonstrable experience signals the helpful-content classifier reads. The two restrictions tighten the same funnel from both ends.
The agencies feeling this most are those running the e-commerce SEM playbook against telehealth and clinical accounts. Branded searches still run. The blunt-keyword campaigns that used to lift cold acquisition do not. Operators are also working with the policy reality that updates landed roughly every quarter through 2025, and the next set has not been published yet.
“Treat your Google healthcare account as a quarterly-policy surface, not a fixed playbook. Audit certification status, scrub prescription-drug terms from copy and destination pages, and structure organic content around experience signals the helpful-content classifier rewards. The agencies running the unchanged 2022 SEM model on a clinical brand are paying CAC for impressions a tightened category will not convert.”
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