Is Your Google Ads Account Ready for AI Max? A Smart Pre-Test Checklist

Google Ads continues to evolve, and its latest update, AI Max for Search is a powerful but risky tool if used without preparation.

AI Max promises incremental conversions by expanding beyond traditional keyword targeting. However, without the right foundation, it can quickly turn into a budget drain.

Before enabling AI Max in your Google Ads account, here’s a practical checklist to ensure you’re actually ready.

What Is Google AI Max?

AI Max is Google’s move toward semi-keyword less targeting. While keywords are still required as a starting signal, Google now relies heavily on additional data such as:

• User intent signals
• Search behavior patterns
• Conversion history
• Broad match learning

AI Max is designed to expand reach and uncover new conversions, not simply display ads in AI Overviews.

👉 Important clarification: You do NOT need AI Max enabled to appear in AI Overviews.

Broad match keywords can already trigger ads in AI Overviews without AI Max.

AI Max should be evaluated strictly as a conversion expansion strategy, not a visibility tactic.

✅ What to Check Before Enabling AI Max

1. Accurate Conversion Tracking Is Non-Negotiable

AI Max optimizes toward whatever Google believes is a “conversion.”

If your tracking is flawed, AI Max will make poor decisions—at scale.

Before testing AI Max, ensure:

• Conversions are accurately tracked
• Duplicate conversions are removed
• Conversions reflect real business outcomes, not vanity actions

If tracking is inflated or incomplete, AI Max will optimize toward the wrong signals and waste spend.

2. Use a Conversion-Focused Automated Bidding Strategy

AI Max works best when paired with conversion-based bidding, such as:

• Target CPA
• Target ROAS

While Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value are allowed, they often spend aggressively without respecting efficiency thresholds.

📌 Our experience shows:

• Target CPA & Target ROAS = more predictable performance
• Maximize strategies = higher risk of inefficient spend

If you test AI Max with maximize strategies, monitor budgets closely.

3. Ensure Sufficient Conversion Volume

Although Google allows AI Max with zero conversions, performance tells a different story.

• Under 30 conversions/month → Highly erratic results
• 30–100 conversions/month → Testable with caution
• 100+ conversions/month → Stronger performance consistency

📈 Best practice:

Start AI Max testing in high-volume, non-brand campaigns to evaluate its real impact.

4. No Impression Share Lost Due to Budget

If your campaigns are already limited by budget, AI Max will divert spend away from your best-performing keywords.

The ideal scenario:

• Your core keywords are fully funded
• AI Max experiments with unused budget, not critical spend

If you’re losing impression share due to budget, fix that first before enabling AI Max.

5. Proven Broad Match Success Is Essential

AI Max treats all keywords as broad match—and then expands even further.

If broad match hasn’t worked for you yet, AI Max will amplify inefficiencies.

Before AI Max, you should have:

• Successful broad match campaigns
• Well-structured ad groups
• Strong ad copy
• Conversion-optimized landing pages

👉 AI Max is not a shortcut for weak account structure.

🌐 Should You Enable URL Expansion?

AI Max allows Google to choose landing pages dynamically—but this can be dangerous.

Pages You Should Almost Always Exclude

• Blogs & informational content
• Help or support pages
• FAQs
• Pages without conversion tracking
• Old landing pages or outdated designs

🚨 Common issue:
AI Max often mismatches geography-specific landing pages.

Example:

• California campaign traffic sent to Texas landing pages

If your site uses:

• Location-specific pages
• Campaign-specific landing pages

You must exclude irrelevant URLs manually.

📌 In most cases, we’ve seen better results with URL expansion turned OFF, especially for structured landing page funnels.

🎯 Final Verdict: Should You Test AI Max?

AI Max can be powerful—but only when:

• Conversion tracking is clean
• Broad match already works
• Budgets aren’t constrained
• Campaigns have meaningful volume

Without these foundations, AI Max often becomes an expensive experiment.

At DigitalHub US, we recommend controlled testing, not blind activation.

Need Help Testing AI Max Safely?

Our team helps businesses evaluate, test, and scale AI-driven Google Ads strategies—without risking wasted ad spend.

👉 Contact DigitalHub US to see if AI Max is right for your account.