What's changing

For years, a Google Ads account ran on choices a person made. Which searches to bid on. What the ads said. Which page people landed on. Automation helped with bidding, but the steering was yours, or your agency's.

Performance Max and AI Max hand more of that steering to Google.

Performance Max is a single campaign that runs across all of Google: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover and Maps. You give it a budget, a goal and a set of headlines, images and videos. Google decides where to show them, to whom and in what combination.

AI Max is a set of features switched on inside an ordinary Search campaign. It does three main things:

  • It widens matching, so your ads can show for searches beyond your keyword list, based on your ads and your website.
  • It can rewrite or add to your ad text, using content from your website.
  • It can send people to a different page on your site from the one you chose.

Google has been moving Search campaigns towards AI Max. In September 2026 there were reports of accounts being upgraded without an opt-out. Advertisers were worried about losing control of their keywords, bids and copy according to a report by Veonib. If whoever runs your account hasn't mentioned AI Max yet, it's worth asking.

What it means for a business like yours

None of this is bad in itself. Automation can find good searches you'd never have thought of. It can test more combinations of ad text than any person could. On a well-run account, it can bring your cost per lead down.

The problem is what it learns from, and what it's allowed to do.

Google's automation chases whatever you tell it counts as a success. If your tracking counts a tap on your phone number as a lead, it will find you more taps. Some will be people checking your opening hours. If it counts every form submission, it will happily find you spam. It can't tell the difference unless you show it.

It also takes the easy wins. Performance Max is very good at showing ads to people already searching for your business by name. Most of them would have found you anyway. It counts them as conversions all the same, and the campaign looks like a success.

The work has moved from pressing buttons to setting the rules. Someone still has to decide what counts as a good lead, which searches to avoid and what your ads may say. And someone has to check where the money went.

The guardrails I'd put in place

These are the checks I'd want on any account using AI Max or Performance Max. Most take an afternoon to set up. A few need doing every week.

1. Count real leads, not activity

Start with conversion tracking. Only count the actions that matter to your business: a completed enquiry form, a phone call over a set length, a booking. Anything softer, like page views or clicks on your email address, should be switched off or kept out of bidding.

Better still, tell Google which enquiries turned into customers. Even a monthly upload of your qualified leads teaches it far more than a raw count of forms. A spreadsheet is fine. This matters more than any setting below.

2. Keep your brand name separate

Use brand exclusions, so Performance Max and AI Max can't take credit for people searching for you by name. Run your brand searches in their own small campaign instead. Then you can see what the automation is really adding.

3. Build a proper negative keyword list

Negative keywords stop your ads showing for searches you don't want. Think jobs, training courses, "free", DIY, services you don't offer and places you don't cover. Add them at account level, so they apply everywhere, including to the wider matching AI Max brings in.

4. Check what your ads are saying

If AI Max is writing or changing your ad text, read what it produces. That matters most in regulated areas like healthcare, legal and financial services, or wherever prices and claims need to be exact. You can switch text changes off. For most regulated businesses, I would.

5. Control where people land

If Google is allowed to choose your landing pages, exclude the ones that don't sell: blog posts, careers pages, old offers, your privacy policy. Better still, point it at a small set of pages built to turn visitors into enquiries.

6. Target people in your area, not people interested in it

Check your location settings. The default can include people outside your area who've simply shown an interest in it. For a plumber in Bath or a clinic in Cheltenham, that's money spent on people you can't serve.

7. Read the search terms every week

AI Max and Performance Max now show more of the searches behind your clicks than they used to. Use that. A weekly look at the search terms is still the quickest way to spot waste. Every bad search you find becomes a new negative keyword.

8. Judge it on your numbers, not Google's

Compare what Google reports with what reached your inbox, your phone and your till. If Google is reporting far more leads than your team received, that gap is the story. It should be explained to you every month.

Should you switch AI Max on?

It depends on your account. This is how I'd decide.

If your conversion tracking is clean and you get a steady number of real leads each month, test it. Run it as an experiment against your current setup for a few weeks, then compare the cost per qualified lead.

If your tracking is messy, or you only get a handful of leads a month, fix the tracking first. Automation fed poor data just makes poor decisions faster.

If it's already been switched on, don't panic, and don't just switch it off. Look at the searches it has brought in, the ad text it's written and the pages it's chosen. Add the guardrails above. Then judge it on real leads.

Questions to ask whoever runs your account

If an agency or freelancer manages your Google Ads, these are fair questions to ask this month:

  • Is AI Max switched on in any of our Search campaigns?
  • Which conversions is Google optimising for, and are they real leads?
  • Are searches for our business name kept separate?
  • When were the search terms last reviewed, and what was excluded?
  • What ad text has Google written for us, and who checked it?
  • How do Google's reported leads compare with the ones we received?

Good answers are short and specific. If you get vague reassurance, or a dashboard instead of an answer, that tells you something too. I've written more on what your PPC agency should be telling you every month.

In short

AI Max and Performance Max aren't something to fear, or something to switch on and forget. They do what you tell them, and they'll do things you didn't ask for unless you set limits. The value now is in someone setting those guardrails, checking where the money went and explaining it plainly.

That's how I run Google Ads for businesses in Bristol and the South West: automation where it earns its place, with a person checking it every week. If you'd like a second opinion on how it's being used in your account, send me a message below.