Is Your Account Ready for Google AI Max? A Pre-Test Checklist - Adil Raseed

AI Max treats your entire account like a giant broad-match engine. If your foundation is shaky, the AI will simply scale your existing errors.

AI Max is only as smart as the data you feed it. If your tracking is inflated or “dirty,” the AI will optimize for the wrong actions.

Accurate Tracking: Ensure conversions are deduplicated and focus on high-value business outcomes (leads/sales) rather than “soft” metrics (button clicks).
Conversion-Focused Bidding: AI Max requires a Smart Bidding strategy.
- Recommended: Target CPA or Target ROAS. These provide a “guardrail” for the AI.
- Caution: Maximize Conversions/Value without a target can lead to high-CPA spikes as the AI aggressively tests new, unproven queries to spend your budget.
Volume Requirements: Aim for at least 30 conversions per month per campaign before testing. Accounts with 100+ conversions see significantly more stability during the learning phase.

AI Max is essentially “Broad Match 2.0.” If you haven’t successfully run Broad Match keywords in your account yet, AI Max will likely struggle.

Validation: Review your current Broad Match performance. If you are constantly adding negative keywords to stay on track, AI Max will require even heavier “babysitting.”
The “Keywordless” Factor: Remember that AI Max can match users based on your website content, even if the user didn’t type one of your keywords.

One of the riskiest features of AI Max is Final URL Expansion, which allows Google to send traffic to any page it deems relevant.

Mandatory Exclusions: Create a list of URLs the AI must never use as landing pages.
- Exclude: Blogs, FAQ pages, Privacy Policies, Careers pages, and “Help” documentation.
Geo-Mismatch Alert: If you have location-specific landing pages (e.g., separate pages for “Chicago” and “Miami”), be careful. AI Max has been known to send Florida traffic to California pages if they aren’t strictly excluded at the campaign level.

AI Max can dynamically rewrite your headlines and descriptions using Gemini 3.

Brand Voice Check: If you are in a highly regulated industry (legal, pharma, finance), do not enable “Automatically Created Assets” without strict brand guidelines.
Text Guidelines: Use Google’s “Text Guidelines” (if enabled in your account) to tell the AI what phrases or promises are strictly off-limits.

AI Max is an expansion tool, not a fix for failing campaigns.

Check IS Lost to Budget: If you are already “Limited by Budget” and losing impression share on your core keywords, enabling AI Max is counterproductive. It will take budget away from your proven keywords to “experiment” on new ones.
The Goal: Only use AI Max when you have “uncapped” budget and are looking for incremental growth beyond your top-performing keywords.

Don’t enable AI Max account-wide on day one.

Use Google Ads Editor: The web interface is slow for this. Use the Editor to enable AI Max only for high-volume, non-brand ad groups.
The 50/50 Experiment: Use the “Campaign Experiments” tool to run a split test. Compare the AI Max version against your “Business as Usual” campaign.
The 2-Week Rule: Ignore the data for the first 14 days. The “Learning Phase” for AI Max is volatile; making changes during this time resets the algorithm.