Google Ads in 2026: six strategies for Search, Performance Max and AI Max

How Google Ads works in 2026

Every search runs a fresh auction. In 2026 Google also began retiring older campaign types.

1. Step 1 · EligibilityCan your ad show?Your keywords, or Google's AI matching, decide which searches your ad is even considered for.
2. Step 2 · Ad RankWhere does it rank?Computed fresh every time: bid, expected click rate, ad and landing-page quality, the context of the search, and your assets.
3. Step 3 · PriceWhat do you pay?Less than your maximum: what it takes to beat the ad below you, not your full bid.

AI answers have not shrunk paid search. Alphabet's Q1 2026 results showed paid clicks up 13% and cost per click up 5%. A 2026 randomised study found AI Overviews cut organic clicks by 39.8% while ad clicks did not move.

Almost every control that remains is a way to say where your ad should not show: negative keywords, brand exclusions, placement and URL exclusions, and text guidelines.

Strategy 1: split brand from everything else

Brand searches and new-customer searches behave like two different businesses. Keep them apart.

People who search your brand name already want you: they convert often and cheaply. People searching for the problem you solve are new and convert less. Put them in one campaign and the bidding learns an average that fits neither. Google's AI campaign types also reach for brand searches, because those convert best.

• Campaign 1 · Search, brand. Exact and phrase match only, so it cannot drift into generic searches. Keep it small and cheap.
• Campaign 2 · Search, non-brand. Your growth engine. Add your brand as a shared negative keyword list so brand searches stay out.
• Campaign 3 · Performance Max, Shopping. For stores with a product feed. Add brand exclusions so it earns new customers, not brand clicks.

Brand exclusions work only if Google recognises your brand. If it does not, fall back to negative keywords, with spellings and plurals. And switch off auto-applied recommendations, especially keyword removal and broad-match upgrades: accepted silently, they move searches out of your control.

Strategy 2: search that converts

Keywords are now suggestions to Google's matching. Negatives, the search terms report and the ad itself do the steering.

The weekly search terms routine

1. Open the search terms report. Sort by cost. Every term with spend and no conversion in 30 days is a candidate negative.
2. Add negatives as lists. One shared list for junk (free, jobs, DIY), one for competitors, one for your brand on non-brand campaigns.
3. Protect what converts. Never add a negative that would block a term that has converted. Check before you save.
4. Write the ad for the page. Use the words from the search in the headline, and make the landing page say the same thing in its first line.

Responsive search ads take up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90. Give Google distinct ideas: the product name, proof, speed, a guarantee, the search words themselves. Ad Strength rates variety, not results: judge ads on conversions and cost per conversion over at least two weeks.

Make the page's first headline repeat the ad's first headline. Never send search traffic to your home page: send each ad group to the page that answers its search.

Strategy 3: AI Max and Performance Max, controlled

Both reach past your keywords. AI Max is now pre-selected in new Search campaigns, so set the limits first.

• Switch 1 · Search term matching. Finds searches beyond your keywords. Turn it off on brand and tight exact-match ad groups.
• Switch 2 · Text customization. Writes headlines from your site. Limit it with text guidelines: up to 25 excluded terms and 40 written rules.
• Switch 3 · Final URL expansion. Sends people to the page Google picks. URL exclusions only work with this and text customization on, so add them the moment you switch it on.

Before you switch AI Max on: test it with a 50/50 experiment for at least four weeks, turn off Search Partners (one 250-campaign study found partner sites converting at 0.07% against 3.04% on Google Search), and add competitor names as negatives before launch, not after.

Strategy 4: Smart Bidding by the numbers

Smart Bidding needs no history to start, but it learns from conversions. Match the strategy to your data.

Changing the bid strategy, or which conversion actions are primary, resets learning: the model starts over. Changing the target or the budget recalibrates it: keep target changes under 20% at a time, and wait a week between them.

Setting your first target

1. Discover. Run Maximize conversions with no target for 2 to 4 weeks. The cost per acquisition you get is the real price.
2. Set. Target CPA = that cost plus 10 to 20%, so the system has room to learn.
3. Fund. A daily budget of 10 to 15 times the target CPA, for several conversions a day.
4. Tighten. Lower the target 5 to 10% at a time, 7 to 14 days apart. Stop if volume drops 15%.

Seasonality adjustments are meant for events of 1 to 7 days. In one three-year Black Friday study, 2024 accounts using them saw ROAS fall 15.7% while those without rose 5.7%. Test before a big sale.

Strategy 5 and 6: measurement Google can trust

Smart Bidding optimises to whatever you mark as a conversion. Mark the wrong thing and it learns to chase the wrong thing.

1. One primary action per goal. Purchase, or qualified lead. Mark add to cart, sign-ups and page views as secondary, so bidding ignores them.
2. Check the custom goals. A secondary action added to a campaign's custom goal becomes a bidding input again.
3. Turn on enhanced conversions. Capture email and phone at the moment of form submit, hashed, not on the thank-you page, where the fields are gone.
4. Read the diagnostics card. Goals › Conversions › Settings shows coverage and match rate for each action.

For lead generation, upload qualified leads from your CRM at least weekly, through enhanced conversions for leads, matched on hashed email or phone. A monthly upload arrives after the auctions it should have steered. A conversion rate that looks too good, such as 60%, usually means a micro-event is marked primary.

Run it with Claude

Claude reads your account through a connector, and you approve every change. Google publishes no read-only permission for its Ads API, so the guard is the connector's tools or a Google login with Read only access.

Test any connector before you trust it: match seven days of spend to the Google Ads interface, compare one campaign's numbers in detail, then ask Claude to pause a campaign. A read-only connector must say it cannot; with a write connector and a Read only login, Google must refuse.

Pull the search terms report for the last 30 days. READ ONLY.
1. List every term with spend and zero conversions, sorted by cost.
2. Group them into themes: jobs, free or DIY, competitors, wrong product,
   wrong location, informational.
3. For each theme, propose negatives with the right match type (exact or
   phrase) and the list it belongs in.
4. Check every proposed negative against terms that HAVE converted in the
   last 90 days. Remove any negative that would block one, and say why.
5. Output: a table, then a clean list ready for me to paste into a shared
   negative list. Do not add anything to the account yourself.

The PDF has the other prompts written out in full: an account audit, a structure check, a responsive search ad writer, an AI Max and Performance Max control check, the Monday brief, a conversion tracking check, a bidding plan that waits for your approval, a reality check against your own sales, a competitor scan, and one that builds a live dashboard in Claude.

Make it fit your business

• Online store. Primary conversion: purchase, with value. Brand Search, non-brand Search, and Performance Max launched on the feed only, with a clean Merchant Center feed. Watch for brand leaking into Performance Max.
• Clinic, salon, restaurant or repairs. Primary conversion: calls and bookings. Search with call and location assets, a tight radius and an ad schedule matched to opening hours. Watch for calls under a minute.
• Education, real estate or B2B. Primary conversion: a qualified lead from your CRM, with form submits marked secondary and a weekly upload. Watch for cheap leads that never qualify.
• High-ticket services. Qualified lead, then closed deal with value. Exact and phrase non-brand, and Maximize conversions until you reach 30 qualified leads a month.

Written by

Anisha Dogra

Anisha runs performance marketing and AI systems for brands at RAAY Creative, the AI Lab and marketing studio she co-founded in New Delhi. She writes these guides from the work the studio does every week, and checks every fact against its source before it goes up.

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