AI Max for Search is Google's bundle of automation for search campaigns: search term matching that goes beyond your keywords, text customisation that rewrites your ads, and final URL expansion that sends people to whichever page on your site Google thinks fits. It can widen a campaign's reach a lot. The problem has always been control and visibility: what did it match, what did it write, and where did it send people? Google's two announcements this year address exactly that.
April: AI Brief and text disclaimers
On 30 April 2026 Google announced AI Brief, a Gemini-powered tool where you describe your business, the messages you want, and who you want to reach, and see previews of the assets and searches it produces before committing. It comes with three sets of guidelines: messaging guidelines for what ads should and shouldn't say, matching guidelines for which searches to pursue or avoid, and audience guidelines for tailoring messages. It started with English-language AI Max for Search campaigns, with Performance Max and AI Max for Shopping to follow, and existing text guidelines convert to messaging guidelines automatically.
The same post announced text disclaimers: mandatory text that always appears in the ad, even with final URL expansion switched on. Before this, advertisers in regulated categories who needed a disclaimer couldn't use final URL expansion. Now they can.
September: more languages and the search journey report
On 23 September Google expanded the AI Brief beta to Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, and announced a new Google Ads report that shows the search ad journey in one view: the search term that triggered the ad, the creative assets the person saw, and the page they landed on. Google said availability details would follow later in the year.
That report is the one I've wanted. Final URL expansion in particular has been a black box: you could see conversions going up or down but not which page the expansion was choosing. Seeing term, asset and landing page together is how you find out that a high-intent search is being sent to a blog post.
How I use AI Max on lead generation accounts
I don't switch it all on. On the Boatastic search account the campaign that worked was three tightly grouped ad groups bid on Target CPA, with the search terms report cleaned every fortnight. Loose matching on a high-ticket service produces expensive clicks. So:
- Search term matching: on, but only once the campaign has a clean negative keyword list and enough conversions that Google is matching to leads rather than clicks. Matching guidelines, now that they exist, are where I'd write the exclusions in plain English as well.
- Text customisation: on, with messaging guidelines that name the claims the client can't make. For a clinic or a financial services client the new text disclaimers are what makes this usable at all.
- Final URL expansion: off until the search journey report is in the account and I can see where people are being sent. A lead campaign that lands on the wrong page is paying for the click and losing the lead.
What to check in your own account
- Whether AI Max was switched on by a recommendation you accepted. It often is.
- Whether final URL expansion is on, and whether your site has pages you'd never want an ad to land on. Add URL exclusions if so.
- Whether messaging guidelines exist. If the ads are being rewritten with no guidance, write some.
- The search terms report, with the same discipline as any other search campaign.
Automation in search is fine when you can see what it's doing. These two updates make that possible for the first time, and I'll update this post when the search journey report reaches UK accounts.
Sources checked on 4 November 2026.
I run paid ads on Meta, Google and TikTok across the UK, the Gulf and Pakistan, and build the tracking and pages around them. Get in touch or find me on LinkedIn.