Google Ads quietly handed you back three controls

For two years Performance Max, Google's all-in-one automated campaign, gave you almost nothing to steer with. You set a budget and a goal, handed Google your assets, and hoped. That has changed. Through 2025 and into 2026 Google added back three real controls: campaign-level negative keywords, account-wide placement exclusions, and a search terms report. None of them were announced loudly. All of them matter if you spend on Google Ads. Here is what to switch on this week.

What changed

Three things, in order of how much money they save you.

You can add negative keywords to Performance Max. Campaign-level negatives rolled out to every advertiser in January 2025, and Google later lifted the cap far past the old 100-keyword ceiling. Before this, Performance Max could spend on searches you would never choose, and you could not stop it. Now you can. (Search Engine Journal has tracked the rollout.)

You can block placements across your whole account. As of early 2026, account-level placement exclusions apply across Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, and YouTube from one central list. This came after independent researchers showed Google ads turning up on junk and worse, which pushed Google to give advertisers impression-level placement data starting March 2025. (eMarketer covered the transparency push.)

You can see the search terms. Performance Max now has a search terms report. It is thinner than the Search-campaign version, but it finally shows the queries you are paying for. That is the single most useful place to look when a campaign is burning budget with little to show.

There is a fourth change coming whether you act or not. AI Max for Search is Google's new AI layer for Search campaigns, and it is replacing Dynamic Search Ads. The forced migration was pushed to 2027, but new Search campaigns lean on it by default. (Google's own announcement lays out the features.)

Why it matters

Automation did not go away. Google still owns your bidding, your placements, and most of your targeting. What changed is that you can now see what it did and fence off the worst of it. That is the difference between a black box and a machine you supervise.

The biggest single leak is brand. A long-running complaint from advertisers is that Performance Max quietly spends on your own brand searches, people typing your name who would have found you anyway, and then takes credit for those conversions. It makes the campaign look brilliant and hides weak prospecting. The optimization specialists at Optmyzr studied tens of thousands of campaigns and the pattern shows up again and again. Until you separate brand from the rest, you are flying blind on whether Google is actually finding you new customers.

The placement and search-term controls matter for a simpler reason. A small budget cannot afford waste. If even a fifth of your spend is going to irrelevant searches or garbage placements, that is a fifth of your budget not reaching a buyer.

Your move

Spend twenty minutes in your account and do these in order.

1. Pull the search terms report. Look for queries that have nothing to do with what you sell. Every junk theme you find becomes a campaign-level negative keyword. Repeat this monthly.
2. Set your brand straight. Run a separate, cheap brand campaign and add a brand exclusion list to Performance Max so it stops claiming brand traffic. Now your Performance Max numbers reflect real prospecting, and you can judge it honestly.
3. Build one account-level placement exclusion list. Block the obvious junk (made-for-ads sites, kids content, anything off-brand) once, and it protects every campaign. Check the placement report after a couple of weeks and add to it.
4. Decide on AI Max deliberately. If you rely on Dynamic Search Ads, turning AI Max on yourself now means you configure the brand controls and URL settings. Waiting means Google flips it for you on its timeline. Choose on purpose.

Tools and resources

You do not need new software for this, just the controls already in your account. Where a tool helps is everywhere downstream of the click.

The ad gets you the visit. What you do with the visit decides whether the spend pays off. If a click lands on a page with no clear next step and no follow-up, the budget you just protected leaks out the other end. A simple booking and follow-up setup, like the one we describe in our GoHighLevel local business setup, captures the lead and texts them back before they cool off.

It is also worth reading our Meta Advantage+ briefing alongside this. The two platforms are moving the same direction: AI owns the targeting, and your creative, your offer, and your exclusions are the levers you keep.

Worth watching

Two things to keep an eye on.

The first is whether Google adds budget control to match its reporting. Right now Performance Max will show you how spend split across channels, but it still will not let you set a budget per channel. Reporting without control is half a gift. Watch for the other half.

The second is the AI Max migration. Deadlines have already slipped once, from 2026 into 2027. If you run Search campaigns, treat the migration as a when, not an if, and get familiar with the brand inclusion and exclusion settings before it is forced. For the wider shift in how people find businesses at all, our AI search topic hub tracks what is moving.