Google is changing how your adverts work this month. Here's what it means.
If you run adverts on Google, something is changing in your account this month, and Google isn't asking permission. It's called AI Max. Most of the explanations online are written for people who do this for a living, so here's the version for people who don't.
How a Google advert works today
You pick the words people type, like "emergency dentist Bolton". You write the advert's headlines. You choose which page of your website they land on. Google shows your advert when someone searches your words. Three decisions, all yours: which searches, what it says, where it sends people.
Plenty of small accounts already let Google loosen two of those. A setting called broad match lets Google show your advert for searches it thinks are similar to your words, not just the words themselves. Another, called automatically created assets, lets Google write extra headlines and descriptions itself, using your website as the source. Lots of businesses have these switched on and don't remember doing it.
What AI Max is
AI Max bundles all three decisions into one AI-driven package. In Google's own words it brings together "search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion". Translated:
- Search term matching: Google decides which searches your advert appears for, including ones you never chose.
- Text customisation: Google writes or rewrites your headlines and descriptions.
- Final URL expansion: Google picks which page of your site to send each person to.
You keep some guardrails. Brand controls and location controls stay, and your negative keywords, the searches you've told Google to avoid, still apply.
Who is being switched, and when
From 1 September, any Search campaign with broad match or automatically created assets switched on is being converted to AI Max automatically. Google's email to advertisers put it plainly: "Starting September 1, 2026, campaigns using automatically created assets (ACA) and/or campaign-level broad match setting will automatically be upgraded to AI Max for Search campaigns." The conversion runs through the whole of September. There is no opt-out.
Campaigns built on plain, exact keywords with hand-written adverts are not being converted, for now. The older Dynamic Search Ads type gets the same treatment in February 2027, after advertisers pushed back on the original date.
Why it matters
Three things can now change in your account without anyone touching it.
Your advert can start appearing for searches you would never have chosen, and you pay for those clicks. Google's pitch is that it finds customers you were missing. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it finds people looking for something else entirely.
Google can put words in your mouth. For most businesses that's a mild risk of blandness. If you're a dentist, a clinic or anyone whose claims are regulated, a headline you didn't write is a real risk.
People may land on a different page than the one you built for the offer. Fine if your whole site is in good shape. Less so if one page was carefully designed to convert and the rest weren't.
None of this is necessarily bad. Google's automation often does find cheaper customers than a person would. But it means the first few weeks after the switch need checking.
Three things to check this month
- The search terms report. Look at what your advert actually showed up for. Anything irrelevant gets added as a negative keyword, so it stops.
- The headlines Google wrote. They're visible in the account. Read them the way a customer would. Anything wrong, overstated or off-brand can be removed, and text customisation can be switched off for the campaign if you'd rather write your own.
- Where people are landing. Check which pages Google is sending traffic to. If it's picking pages that don't sell, final URL expansion can be switched off too.
Each of these features has its own switch inside the campaign, so this isn't all-or-nothing. Google's own help pages confirm it.
Our honest take
Think of AI Max as a keen assistant who used to wait for instructions and, from this month, will also decide which customers to approach, what to say to them and which door to send them through, using your website as the brief. That's a good assistant if someone checks their work weekly. It's an expensive one if nobody does.
So don't panic, and don't switch everything off on principle either. Let it run, look at the three reports above, and keep what works. If nobody is looking at your Google account regularly, this is the month to change that.
If you'd like us to look at yours, book a call. If not, you now know what your Google rep means by "AI Max".
