AI Max vs standard Search: which fits a local account

Your Google Ads campaign may be running AI Max right now, and nobody on your side switched it on. Google’s setup page says new Search campaigns have it on by default, and its text customization page says that since September 2026, campaigns using automatically created assets are being upgraded to it automatically.

If you run ads for a plumbing company, an HVAC business or a clinic, you may not get to choose whether to try it. Google’s help pages say AI Max is not a new campaign type but a layer inside your existing Search campaigns, so the real choice is how much of it to let run: keep it, trim it, or go back to exact and phrase keywords.

What decides it for a local account

• Do your conversions mean booked work? AI Max steers by whatever you count as a conversion. If calls that never book count the same as booked installs, it will find you more calls that never book.
• How do you bid? Google’s FAQ says search term matching will not work with manual CPC bidding, and its setup page says the features need conversion-based Smart Bidding to work properly.
• Does the budget run out most days? Then the plumber case further down is probably yours.
• Do you have pages you would never send a paying click to? Careers, a financing application, an old coupon page.
• Is there wording your ads must never use? That matters most for clinics and anyone in a licensed trade.

Standard Search: you pick the searches

A standard Search campaign, with AI Max off, runs on the keywords you choose. Exact and phrase match keep your ads close to what you wrote, so “water heater replacement” stays near water heaters. You write the headlines and descriptions, you choose the landing page for each ad, and pinned headlines stay where you pin them.

The strength is predictability. The weakness is that you only show for searches you thought of, and a homeowner with water on the garage floor types things nobody puts in a keyword list.

AI Max: Google widens the net and writes some of the ad

Turning AI Max on switches on three things, according to Google’s help pages:

• Search term matching. Google expands your keywords with broad match and what it calls keywordless technology, learning from your keywords, your ads and your site’s pages. It can be switched off per ad group.
• Text customization, formerly automatically created assets. Google writes extra headlines and descriptions from your landing page, ads and keywords, and reviews them at least every 48 hours. They only serve when predicted to beat the ones you wrote.
• Final URL expansion. Google can send a click to a different page on your domain if it predicts that page will do better. It needs text customization on, and when it is on, your pinned headlines are no longer guaranteed.

It also adds controls: URL exclusions, URL inclusions, brand inclusions and exclusions, and locations of interest, an ad group setting Google describes as reaching people by geographic intent even in keywordless matches.

Side by side

	Standard Search (AI Max off)	Search with AI Max on
Suits	Small budgets, few conversions, strict wording	Accounts with steady, trustworthy conversion data
Control over searches	Your keywords and match types, plus negatives	Your keywords plus Google’s expansions; negatives still apply
Control over landing pages	Each ad goes to the page you set	Google may pick another page unless you exclude it
Ad text	Yours, pins respected	Yours plus Google-written lines; pins not guaranteed with URL expansion or URL inclusions
What the reports show	Search terms with your match types	“AI Max” as a match type, a Source column and a “Search terms and ad combinations” view
Service area and brands	Location setting and negatives	Location setting, locations of interest, brand lists, URL exclusions

Pros and cons

Standard Search

Pros:

• You know which searches you are paying for.
• Manual bidding still works, which suits a new account with no conversion history.

Cons:

• You miss the searches nobody thought to add.
• Some newer controls, such as locations of interest and URL exclusions, only exist with AI Max on.

AI Max

Pros:

• Reaches searches your keyword list would never catch.
• On eligible accounts, Google offers a one-click 50/50 experiment against your current campaign, so you can test before committing.

Cons:

• Clicks can land on pages that do not book, unless you exclude them.
• Generated copy is built from your site, ads and keywords, partly in Google’s own words, so an outdated offer or a claim you would not make in an ad can end up in one.
• Google asks for at least two weeks without changes such as new negatives after you turn it on, and you pay for that learning.

The risk for a local business

Two things go wrong in local accounts. The first is geography. Google’s default location option, Presence or Interest, also reaches people who have shown interest in your area, including through the words in their searches. Presence limits ads to people likely to be in or regularly in the places you target. With wider matching on, a loose setting means more clicks from people you cannot serve.

The second is drift. Google says Final URL expansion only picks pages relevant to the search and themed to the ad group, but relevant is not the same as profitable: a financing page, an “areas we serve” page or a blog post about a repair you rarely take can all look relevant.

In the same edit that turns AI Max on, add the pages that never book as URL exclusions. They cannot go in earlier: Google only offers URL exclusions with AI Max on, and they need text customization and Final URL expansion on as well. After the test, open the landing pages report and read the “Selected by” column to see which pages AI Max picked. If you use a tracking template, check that expanded pages still load with it; Google warns some setups send visitors to a static page or a 404.

Check brand terms too. Google’s brand library can include a small business’s name as a brand, so see whether yours and your competitors’ are there, and decide whether your ads should show on them.

Which fits which account

A one-location plumber with a modest budget and only a handful of tracked calls a month. Stay standard for now. There is too little conversion data for the system to learn from, and if the budget runs out by mid-afternoon, Google itself says AI Max will not be effective in a campaign limited by budget. Get booked jobs counted as conversions first, and keep the budget from running out before the evening calls.

A multi-service HVAC and plumbing contractor with call tracking and booked jobs fed back from the CRM. This is the account AI Max was built for. Run the 50/50 experiment, exclude the pages that do not book, set Presence targeting, and judge it on booked jobs at the end of the test, not on conversions in week one. If your Local Services Ads have already moved into Google Ads, as Google has been doing in phases since August, starting with select home and storefront service advertisers, read both lead reports side by side so no customer is counted twice.

A clinic with regulated services or words it cannot use. Search term matching can be tested in one ad group, with text customization and URL expansion off. Google’s text customization page tells you to keep your site accurate, not misleading and within its policies and the law, so treat every generated headline as your own. If your account has text guidelines (Google still labels them an experimental beta), set excluded terms there. A term exclusion cannot stop prices, so if no price should ever appear in your ads, add the messaging restriction “Don’t generate assets with prices” as well. Then read the “Google AI” assets in the asset report every week.

Where we start on an AI Max account

One team runs your Google Ads and the CRM behind them, so the ad account can count booked jobs rather than calls. You own the ad account, the CRM is set up in your business’s name, and we have worked with local businesses since 2015.

If your campaign was upgraded in September and nobody decided it, that is the first thing we would check. For your free plan, we would open the campaign settings and note which of the three AI Max switches are on, check the location option and what counts as a conversion, read the “Selected by” column for pages that never book, and tell you whether to keep AI Max, trim it to search term matching or switch it off.

See how we run Google Ads for local businesses and how the CRM and follow-up feed booked jobs back into it.

Run a plumbing company? Here is what this looks like for plumbers.