AI Max for Search: what changes and what you can still control

Contents

• What is AI Max in Google Ads?
• What does AI Max actually change?
• Do keywords and negative keywords still work?
• What can you still control with AI Max on?
• When does AI Max turn on by itself?
• Should a local contractor turn AI Max on?
• What to watch in your search terms after AI Max
• How to turn AI Max on or off
• AI Max FAQ

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What is AI Max in Google Ads?

AI Max is a setting inside a Search campaign. You do not build an AI Max campaign. You open a Search campaign you already run, find the AI Max panel in its settings, and switch it on. Google describes it as a suite of targeting and creative enhancements that works without changing your current setup.[1]

It is the AI version of Dynamic Search Ads, which is why Dynamic Search Ads is being retired into it. The old feature crawled your site and matched ads to searches on its own. AI Max does the same job with more reach and, to be fair to Google, more controls than the old one ever had.

The reason this page exists is control, not novelty. AI Max decides more of your account than any setting before it: which searches you show for, what your ad says, and which page the click lands on. Understanding the three switches and the controls that fence them in is the difference between AI Max finding you work and AI Max finding you tire-kickers.

What does AI Max actually change?

Three things, and you can run them separately. Turning AI Max on switches all three on, then you uncheck what you do not want. Two of them are tied together, which catches people out.

Feature	What it does	Where you toggle it	Watch out for
Search term matching	Goes beyond your keywords using broad match and keywordless matching to find related searches	On at campaign level, then on or off per ad group	The big one. This is what widens your reach and your risk
Text customization	Uses your existing ads, landing page copy and assets to write new headlines and descriptions	Campaign settings, “Asset optimization”	Your wording is no longer only your wording
Final URL expansion	Sends the click to whichever page on your site Google judges most relevant	Campaign settings, “Asset optimization”	Needs text customization on. Turn text customization off and this switches off too

Google says final URL expansion “will only send traffic to URLs that are query relevant and themed to your ad group”.[1] Useful to know, and still worth checking, because a contractor site usually has pages Google should never send a paying click to. Your careers page. Your finance terms. The blog post about how to unblock a drain yourself, which is the last page you want a paying searcher to read. One more mechanic goes with it: if final URL expansion picks a different page, your pinned assets are not used, because Google judges they may not match what the person wants. So pinning your phone number or your city into a headline does not lock it in place.

Do keywords and negative keywords still work?

Yes to both, and this is the part most coverage gets wrong. Your keywords keep running. Standard ad groups keep working the way they always did. Adding at least one broad match keyword to an ad group is what gives that ad group keywordless matching on top.[1]

Negative keywords keep working too. Google’s own answer is direct: “Negative keywords will be respected even with AI Max turned on”.[2] Hold onto that sentence, because it is your main brake.

Here is the practical read for a contractor. AI Max widens the front door. Negative keywords are how you decide who gets through it, and with AI Max on they matter more than they ever did, not less. Any campaign heading into this needs a real negative list first, not the six terms someone added at setup. Build the block list properly before you switch anything on.

What can you still control with AI Max on?

More than you would guess. These controls are the reason AI Max is a fairer deal than Dynamic Search Ads was. Most sit in the AI Max section of your campaign settings, and a few are per ad group.

Control	What it does	Level
Brand exclusions	Stops your ads showing alongside brands you name	Campaign
Brand inclusions	Ties your ads to the exact brands you want to be seen with	Campaign and ad group
Locations of interest	Reaches people by where they are actually interested in, even on keywordless matches	Ad group
Text guidelines	Bans words or phrases and sets rules for tone in the AI-written text	Campaign
URL exclusions	Stops named pages being used as landing pages, with a “Rules” tab for patterns	Campaign
URL inclusions	Adds pages that final URL expansion missed	Ad group

Text guidelines are the one contractors should use and almost nobody does. Google describes them as a way to set “specific term exclusions, such as restricted words or phrases, and messaging restrictions” for the AI-written copy.[1] For a home-services owner that is your compliance seatbelt. Ban “guaranteed.” Ban “free” if you do not do free callouts. Ban “same day” if you cannot always make same day. An AI-written headline promising something your crew cannot deliver is a complaint, a bad review, and on some trades a licensing problem.

URL exclusions are the second one to set on day one. Add your careers page, your finance page and any DIY blog post. Use the “Rules” tab if the pattern is easy, like anything under your blog folder.

Locations of interest is worth a mention for a different reason. It is an ad group control that helps AI Max understand the area you actually serve. It does not replace your campaign location settings, and it does not fix a campaign still set to presence or interest. Fix that first, in the settings that quietly waste your budget.

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When does AI Max turn on by itself?

For many accounts, next month. Google is upgrading existing Search campaigns to AI Max in stages, and what you get switched on depends on what your campaign uses today.

What your campaign uses now	When	What gets switched on
Text customization (was automatically created assets)	September 2026	Search term matching and text customization
Campaign-level broad match setting	September 2026	Search term matching
Dynamic Search Ads	February 2027	All three, with your existing URL controls kept and dynamic ad groups moved to standard ad groups

Two notes on that table. First, text customization is the setting that used to be called automatically created assets, so if you remember switching that on years ago, you are in the September group. Second, Google moved Dynamic Search Ads back to February 2027 in an update published 11 June 2026. Plenty of agency posts still say September for those, and they are wrong.

So what do you do before September? Not much, but do it properly. Check which group you are in. Build your negative keyword list. Set your text guidelines and URL exclusions, because those controls work whether you opted in or got upgraded. Then take a screenshot of your last 90 days of cost per booked job, so you have a before to compare against. That last step is the one people skip and regret. If you would rather see what it does before the date arrives than after, that is what an experiment is for.

Should a local contractor turn AI Max on?

Honestly, it depends on your budget and your tracking, and for a lot of small local accounts the answer today is not yet. Here is the case against, plainly. Search term matching is built to find searches your keywords never covered. On a national advertiser with room to spend, that is upside. On a contractor running a tight budget across one metro, a wider net catches more of what you do not want, and you pay for every one of them.

The maths is unforgiving on expensive trades. Roofing search clicks ran a $10.70 median cost per click and a $228.15 median cost per lead. When each click costs that, you do not need many irrelevant ones before your week’s budget is gone and the phone has not rung.

There are two things that have to be true before AI Max is a good bet for you. Your conversion tracking has to be clean and counting booked-job-quality actions, not every click on your phone number, because AI Max leans harder on your conversion data than a keyword campaign does. Start with tracking that counts real leads. And you need to be on conversion-based Smart Bidding. Google is blunt that on Manual CPC “the full benefits and capabilities of AI Max will be limited”.[1] Target CPA is where most contractors should already be, and the bidding guide covers how to get there.

If both are true, turn it on in one campaign, not all of them, and watch it. If your tracking is a mess, fix that first. AI Max fed bad conversion data does not fail quietly. It gets confidently, expensively wrong, and it does it faster than you can read a report. That speed is why a lot of owners hand this one to someone watching the account every week.

What to watch in your search terms after AI Max

Your search terms report is where AI Max stops being a theory. Google gives you a view for exactly this. In the search terms report, choose “Search terms and landing pages from AI Max” from the dropdown, and add the “Source” column so you can tell AI Max matches apart from keyword matches. There is also a “Match type” column you can filter to AI Max.[1]

Read it weekly for the first month, then monthly. You are looking for four things, in this order.

1. Searches you would never pay for. Job seekers, DIY, students, other trades, wrong service entirely. Add them as negatives as you go. This list will be longer in the first two weeks than it ever is again.
2. Wrong-area searches. A town you do not serve showing up repeatedly means your locations need work, not your keywords.
3. Which page the click landed on. Open the landing pages report. The “Selected by” column tells you if AI Max chose that URL. If it is sending traffic to a page that cannot book a job, add a URL exclusion.
4. What the AI wrote. Your asset reports mark anything AI-written as “Google AI” in the “Added by” column. Read those headlines like a customer would. If one promises something you cannot deliver, that is a text guideline you need to add.

Then judge the whole thing on the only number that counts, which is cost per booked job over a full month. Not clicks, not impressions, not the optimization score. The full method is in the weekly search terms ritual.

How to turn AI Max on or off

The path is the same either way. Two minutes, and change one campaign at a time.

One warning if you are turning things off. If you switch off text customization, you also switch off final URL expansion, and Google notes that disabling it may affect your other AI Max settings. So change one thing, save, and check what else moved before you change the next.

AI Max FAQ

Is AI Max a campaign type? No. It is a setting inside a Search campaign. You switch it on in the AI Max section of an existing campaign’s settings, and your campaign stays a Search campaign. Performance Max is the separate campaign type people mix it up with, and the two work very differently.

Is AI Max the same as Performance Max? No. Performance Max is its own campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps and Discover. AI Max stays inside your Search campaign and only affects Search. You keep your keywords, your negative keywords and your search terms report, none of which Performance Max gives you.

Do I have to use AI Max? Not yet, and you can toggle it off. But if your campaign uses text customization or the campaign-level broad match setting, Google upgrades it from September 2026, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns follow from February 2027. Check which group you are in now rather than finding out from your bank balance.

Does AI Max work with Manual CPC? Technically yes, but Google states that on Manual CPC “the full benefits and capabilities of AI Max will be limited.” The features are built to run on conversion-based Smart Bidding. If you are still on Manual CPC, sort your bidding before you touch AI Max.

Can I stop AI Max sending traffic to the wrong pages? Yes. Use URL exclusions at campaign level to name pages that should never be a landing page, and there is a “Rules” tab for patterns like your whole blog folder. Add URL inclusions at ad group level for good pages it missed. Check the landing pages report and its “Selected by” column to see what it actually picked.

Will AI Max ignore my negative keywords? No. Google’s answer is that negative keywords will be respected even with AI Max turned on. That makes your negative list the main brake on the wider matching, so build it out before you switch on and keep adding to it from your search terms report for the first month.