Oil painting in American Realism style of a marketer at a wooden desk in a warm study with morning light through a tall window

Google AI Max for Search is the biggest change to Google Ads Search since the move from exact match to broad match in 2021. If you are running Search campaigns for a business (or a client), a decision has already landed on your desk. This is the plain English anchor I keep sending to clients for what AI Max is, what it feeds on, and how to make the move without burning CPA in the first two weeks.

I have run Search campaigns of several million dollars in retail, energy and B2B. This is the read I offer paying clients with no fluff.

What Google AI Max for Search Means

AI Max for Search is a single-click optimization feature that adds Performance Max type AI to a regular Search campaign. Google positioned it during Google Marketing Live 2025 as the "next chapter" for Search, and it has now rolled out across Google Ads accounts (source: Google Ads Help).

It comes bundled with three features under one setting:

  1. Search Term Matching. Google's AI expands your keyword list into net new queries the way Broad Match does, but with more focus on landing page content and asset signal instead of the raw keyword string.
  2. Text Customization. Gemini composes query tuned headlines and descriptions from your final URL, existing assets, and business information.
  3. Final URL Expansion. Automatic URL swapping will occur if Google finds relevant content for your ad on a different URL within your domain.

The Google Ads blog frames these three as one setting (source: Google Ads and Commerce blog). In practice they are three different levers, and the sharpest accounts I have audited turn them on one at a time.

What It Replaces

Oil painting of a wooden filing cabinet with drawers labeled Broad Match, Phrase Match, and DSA sitting empty while a new drawer labeled AI Max is opened

This is where the news matters. AI Max replaces two things you were using this morning.

Dynamic Search Ads. Final URL Expansion inside AI Max is the direct successor. Google has confirmed the automatic migration of Dynamic Search Ads into AI Max, and the deadline was pushed from September 2026 to February 2027 (source: PPC News Feed). You get an extra runway, not a reprieve.

The old broad match playbook. Search Term Matching does what broad match used to do, only more aggressively and with more asset dependency. Google's Ginny Marvin has publicly told agencies that splitting campaigns by match type is now "an outdated practice" and that landing pages plus assets are the primary targeting signal (source: Smarter Ecommerce interview).

If your campaign structure is a legacy exact-and-phrase pyramid with a DSA at the bottom, AI Max collapses that into one campaign with three levers. That is a strategic change, not a UI change.

Performance Claims (And the Warnings)

Google has released its numbers for AI Max, and they are worth quoting precisely because they get used incorrectly:

  • Google reports a 7% average increase in conversions or conversion value across the entire AI Max suite compared to matching alone (source: Google Ads blog).
  • For non-retail advertisers, the reported increase climbs as high as 14%.
  • Accounts previously running exact and phrase match only saw an increase of 27% after adding AI Max.

Now let me talk about the warnings, because they are important. The agency Digital Applied has pointed out that Google's 7% baseline is compared to "AI Max with less" configurations, not a clear side-by-side comparison against Dynamic Search Ads or a well-structured broad match (source: Digital Applied playbook). Treat that 7% as a directional indicator, not a promise. For the first one to two weeks of learning, expect CPA and ROAS to remain unchanged, and evaluate the migration at day 30, not day 3.

Kirk Williams (PPC Kirk) has pointed out the oddness of Google pushing out AI Max alongside Performance Max, considering both utilize overlapping technology (source: Kirk Williams on X). In more practical terms, AI Max is not a substitute for Performance Max. It is the Search-only cousin. When both are active and both respond to the same query, Ad Rank controls the tie.

The MKDM AI Max Migration Ladder

Oil painting of a four-rung wooden ladder leaning against a weathered barn wall in warm afternoon light, each rung inscribed with a stage of the migration process

Having done a considerable amount of these migrations, I have developed a consistent four-rung process, which I call the MKDM AI Max Migration Ladder. Do not skip a rung.

Rung 1: Landing Page Hygiene

Before activating any settings on AI Max, audit every final URL in the campaign. Google's AI interprets landing pages the way a customer would. Broken H1s, stale product copy, thin service pages, or a robots.txt that blocks anything under /landing/ will send AI Max to a bad destination.

Fix things before flipping the switch. This is the most skipped step, and it is the biggest cause of poor performance in the first week.

Rung 2: Brand Controls

Enable brand exclusions on every AI Max campaign. Google has confirmed that brand inclusions and exclusions are integrated at the campaign and ad group level so you can segregate branded traffic for budget and performance measurement (source: Search Engine Roundtable).

Without exclusions, AI Max will happily bid you into competitor terms you did not authorize, or drift into unrelated branded territory when your landing pages mention a partner or supplier by name. Ginny Marvin's own guidance is to use exclusions to prevent the system from "drifting into unprofitable territory."

Rung 3: One Lever at a Time

Enable Search Term Matching first. Give it seven to ten days. Then layer in Text Customization. Only after that, turn on Final URL Expansion.

The sequencing matters because each feature changes a different variable. If you flip all three at once and the CPA moves, you cannot tell whether the query pool, the ad copy, or the landing page routing caused it. Google has built an A/B AI Max experiment feature into the Google Ads UI for exactly this kind of one-at-a-time test.

Rung 4: Reporting Discipline

Here is a trap I have watched three separate clients fall into. The Search Terms report can underreport AI Max queries if you filter by match type equal to "AI Max," because that filter excludes the "Other search terms" bucket. Use the Source column or the full Match Type dimension for an accurate read (source: Google Ads Help).

The Improved Asset Reports now show spend and conversions per asset instead of just impressions, so you can finally see which AI generated headline is actually earning the money.

What I Do For A Client In The First 30 Days

Oil painting of a chalkboard on a wooden wall showing a 30 day migration timeline with landing pages, brand exclusions, search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion

I get asked this every week, so here is the outline for the first month of work on a client account.

  • Day 1 to 3. Audit landing pages. Fix crawl issues. Confirm every final URL loads and matches the ad group intent.
  • Day 4 to 7. Add brand exclusions and negative keyword lists that carry over from the old campaigns. Do not skip this. AI Max respects negatives.
  • Day 8 to 14. Enable Search Term Matching. Monitor the terms report daily. Add negatives aggressively for the first week.
  • Day 15 to 21. Enable Text Customization. Compare AI generated headlines to your control set inside the asset report.
  • Day 22 to 30. Enable Final URL Expansion only if the site is genuinely crawl clean. Grade the migration on 30-day CPA, ROAS, and query relevance, not 7-day flinch.

Google's guidance is that AI Max should hold at least the same CPA and ROAS after the one to two week ramp (source: Google Ads blog). If yours has not by day 21, your landing pages or your exclusions are the reason.

What This Means For Your Account

Two things change for good.

First, keyword lists are no longer the primary targeting signal. Ginny Marvin has said that directly. Your landing pages and your assets do the targeting now. If your site is thin, AI Max punishes you. If your site is sharp, AI Max compounds the value.

Second, the DSA plus broad plus exact plus phrase structure is dead. Consolidate. One AI Max campaign per line of business, with tight brand controls and disciplined negatives, will outperform the fragmented structure most accounts still run.

The migration deadline is February 2027. That is not the deadline I would give a client. The deadline I give a client is this: pilot AI Max on one campaign now, learn on your own timeline, and migrate the rest of the account before Google migrates it for you.

If you want a second set of eyes on your account before you flip the switch, I audit AI Max readiness for a fixed fee and route the fix list back to you or your team. Reach me at mattkundodigitalmarketing.com.

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