Performance Max with nothing stopping it buying your brand

Brand searchers were going to buy. When Performance Max takes them, its return looks strong, budgets move toward it, and the account believes it found new customers it did not find.

Brand exclusions are the control built for this, and since 2025 campaign negatives work on Performance Max too. Brand exclusions are not the brand guidelines setting, which governs whether Google may use your logo and business name in ads: similar name, unrelated job.

The check runs on accounts with Performance Max campaigns whose settings could be read.

Checks that weigh money or clicks judge what they find on your own account's numbers, not on one figure applied to every account, so what counts as a problem on a small account is not the same on a large one. Checks on settings read how the account is set up.

When there is too little to go on, the check says so instead of guessing. A finding always comes with the rows behind it, so you can read the evidence before you decide.

1. In Google Ads, open a Performance Max campaign, then Settings.
2. Look for Brand exclusions.
3. Check whether a brand list with your own brand is applied.
4. Read the campaign's search terms for your brand name.

Create a brand list with your brand in Brand lists, under Tools, then Shared library, and add it as a brand exclusion on each Performance Max campaign that should not buy brand searches.

Keep a separate brand Search campaign, so those searches are still covered and measured on their own.

• Brand exclusions
• Incrementality
• Performance Max

The checks next to this one in Shopping and feeds, each with its own page.

• Performance Max with no negative keyword list
• Products held back by something in the feed
• Performance Max buying queries the Search campaigns already bid on
• Products that cannot appear at all
• Asset groups with no search theme
• The part of the catalogue that got no impression lately