AI Max for Search campaigns

AI Max widens what a Search campaign buys. Keywords become guidance rather than limits, and Google can write the ad text and choose a different page of your site for each search. It never edits the pages themselves.

It can find good searches nobody thought of. It also changes the nature of a carefully built campaign, so it should be a decision you make, with the search terms in front of you. Since September 2026, Google upgrades campaigns that used automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting to AI Max by itself.

1. Open a Search campaign, then Settings, and look for AI Max for Search campaigns.
2. Check its options for text customisation and final URL expansion.
3. Read the search terms report to see what it matched beyond your keywords.
4. Use URL exclusions and negatives to steer it away from pages and searches you do not want.

A software company turns on AI Max. Within weeks it shows on searches comparing tools it never listed as keywords, some of which convert well. It also sends some clicks to blog pages, so the team adds URL exclusions for the blog.

• Turning it on without reading the search terms afterwards.
• Leaving it on in a campaign built around strict exact match, where it undoes the point of the structure.
• Testing it without an experiment, so the before and after mix other changes.

The audit checks Oppy runs on this, each with its own page.

• AI Max is widening what a campaign matches
• How much of the budget Google chose
• Broad match running with nothing to stop it

• Broad match: The widest keyword match type: ads can show on searches related to the keyword's meaning, even without its words.
• Final URL expansion: A setting of Performance Max and AI Max for Search campaigns that lets Google send people to other pages of your site than the one you gave.
• Search term: What someone actually typed when your ad showed.