AI Max for Search: What Changes and the Two Deadlines You Actually Have

Google Ads campaigns are migrating to AI Max for Search on two separate clocks. Campaigns using automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match migrate starting September 2026, a date Google did not postpone. Dynamic Search Ads campaigns migrate starting February 2027 after a five month delay. Most advertisers heard about the delay and stopped preparing. The track that moves first affects far more small business accounts than the DSA track that got the coverage.

What Does AI Max Actually Change in a Search Campaign?

AI Max for Search is a bundle of three AI features attached to a standard Search campaign, and each one takes over a job you used to control directly.

Definition: AI Max for Search is Google's AI feature suite for Search campaigns, consisting of search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion. It is now the default state for new Search campaigns.

Here is what each feature does, per Google's own documentation:

• Search term matching expands your reach beyond your keyword list using broad match and keywordless technology. Google's systems learn from your current keywords, creatives, and URLs to match your ads to searches you never bid on.
• Text customization generates ad copy variations using text from your existing ads, landing pages, and assets. This is the feature formerly known as automatically created assets, which is why ACA users are on the migration clock.
• Final URL expansion lets Google route the click to whichever page on your site it predicts will convert best, replacing the final URL you designated. It requires text customization to stay enabled so the generated copy matches the chosen page.

The practical shift is that your keyword list stops being the boundary of your campaign and becomes a training input. That is not automatically bad. It is a real change in how much of your account behavior is decided by Google's models, and it raises the stakes on your conversion tracking, your negative keywords, and your landing page quality, because those become the steering inputs that remain.

For how this interacts with bidding automation, see our post on AI bidding and where humans still override.

Which of Your Campaigns Is on Which Migration Clock?

Two tracks, two dates. Google confirmed the split in its June 2026 update, and the distinction determines everything about your timeline.

	Track 1: DSA	Track 2: ACA and campaign-level broad match
Who it covers	Campaigns with Dynamic Search Ads ad groups	Campaigns with automatically created assets enabled, or broad match applied at the campaign level
Automigration begins	February 2027 (moved from September 2026)	September 2026 (not postponed)
Features enabled on automigration	All three: search term matching, text customization, final URL expansion, with legacy URL controls preserved	ACA: search term matching and text customization. Broad match: search term matching
Creation window	New DSA creation reopened June 15, 2026, closes January 2027	Not applicable

The two-clock audit is the first thing to run. Open every Search campaign in the account and tag it with its track. A campaign can sit on both clocks at once if it runs DSA ad groups and has ACA enabled, in which case the September date governs part of its behavior. Campaigns on neither clock still default into AI Max if rebuilt, since AI Max is now the default for new Search campaigns.

The pattern we see in small business accounts is that owners know whether they run DSA, because DSA is a deliberate structure. Almost nobody knows whether ACA is on, because it was a recommended setting that got accepted during setup or applied through auto-apply recommendations. That is exactly the population the September track migrates first, and it is why we treat the September date as the urgent one despite the press coverage going to the DSA delay.

[VISUAL 2 INSERTION POINT: blog-google-ads-ai-max-migration-2-which-clock-decision-tree.svg] Caption: One question per branch tells you which migration date governs each campaign in the account.

What Happens If You Let the Automigration Run?

The automatic upgrade is not a catastrophe, but it applies Google's defaults instead of your decisions, and the defaults are expansion-friendly.

When a DSA campaign automigrates, per Google's announcement and PPC Land's June 2026 reporting, dynamic ad groups convert to standard ad groups, all three AI Max features switch on by default, new responsive search ads are generated and submitted for policy review, and legacy URL controls carry over. ACA campaigns get search term matching and text customization. Campaign-level broad match campaigns get search term matching.

Voluntary migration is the only path where you configure the controls first. Migrating on your own schedule means you set brand controls, URL exclusions, and feature toggles before the features activate, and you pick the timing. Google's own delay announcement framed the extension as protecting business results during transition, which is a tacit acknowledgment that unprepared migrations were hurting accounts.

There are already documented cases of what unprepared looks like. In PPC Land's reporting on the migration, one advertiser found that three specific product model searches that DSA had routed to individual product pages were all landing on a generic manufacturer page under AI Max. The system optimized for its prediction, not for the retailer's page logic. URL exclusions and inclusions exist to prevent exactly that, and they only help if someone configures them before the switch.

The sequence we run for client accounts, adapted from our campaign architecture playbook:

1. Tag every campaign with its track and date (the two-clock audit above). 2. Audit landing page eligibility before final URL expansion can activate (next section). 3. Configure brand controls, locations of interest, and URL exclusions. 4. Migrate voluntarily during a lower volume period and baseline performance against the prior 30 days. 5. Review search term reports weekly for the first 90 days.

What Controls Survive the Switch to AI Max?

More than the automation-skeptic framing suggests, but only if you know where they live. Google's help documentation lists the surviving controls, and each maps to a specific risk.

• Brand inclusions and exclusions. Campaign and ad group level inclusions restrict matching to searches involving your brand. Campaign level exclusions keep your ads off competitor or unwanted brand queries.
• Locations of interest. Ad group level targeting by geographic intent, so a service business can hold AI Max matching inside its actual service area.
• URL inclusions, exclusions, and contains rules. Your allowlist and blocklist for where final URL expansion may send traffic. Exclusions require both text customization and final URL expansion to be enabled.
• Per-feature toggles. Each of the three features can be disabled individually at the campaign or ad group level. Running search term matching while keeping final URL expansion off is a legitimate configuration, and often the right starter posture.
• Negative keywords. Still function, and still your strongest lever against junk matching. Our negative keywords guide covers the build process.
• Text guidelines, via AI Brief. Existing text guidelines automatically move into the messaging guidelines section of AI Brief, Google's plain language steering layer announced April 30, 2026.

Definition: AI Brief is the natural language interface for steering AI Max creative, with three input categories: messaging guidelines (what ads may and may not say), matching guidelines (which searches to pursue or avoid), and audience guidelines (who to speak to and how).

Reporting also survived, and it improved in June 2026. The search terms report now carries an AI Max match type designation and a source column showing whether a match came from broad match expansion or keywordless matching. Google added reporting views for search terms and landing pages from AI Max and from DSA, which Search Engine Land covered on June 23, 2026. You can see what the system is doing. The question is whether anyone in the account is looking.

[VISUAL 3 INSERTION POINT: blog-google-ads-ai-max-migration-3-controls-matrix.svg] Caption: Every AI Max expansion behavior has a surviving control. Automigration enables the behaviors without configuring the controls.

How Do You Audit Landing Page Eligibility Before Final URL Expansion Turns On?

Final URL expansion is enabled by default when you opt into AI Max, and by default your entire domain is eligible. The audit is about deciding, page by page, where paid traffic is allowed to land before Google decides for you.

Definition: Final URL expansion is the AI Max feature that replaces your designated final URL with a different page from your site when Google's systems predict the swap will perform better.

The process we use:

1. Crawl your own site the way Google sees it. Export every indexable URL. That full list, not your campaign URLs, is the candidate pool for final URL expansion. 2. Sort every URL into three buckets: convert, assist, exclude. Convert pages have an offer and a form or purchase path. Assist pages inform but do not convert, like blog posts and team bios. Exclude pages should never receive paid traffic: careers, legal, login, thin or outdated content. 3. Build the exclusion list from buckets two and three. Use URL exclusions and contains rules in the campaign's AI Max settings. Patterns like every URL containing /blog/ are faster than listing pages one at a time when the whole section should be off limits. 4. Add URL inclusions for the pages you want favored. Inclusions teach the system which parts of the site are relevant, which shapes matching as well as landing. 5. Check the pages that remain. Whatever is still eligible will receive paid clicks. If a page in the convert bucket has a weak headline, no clear next step, or stale pricing, fix the page before the feature activates, not after the spend report shows the problem.

A three bucket audit on a typical small business site takes an afternoon. Skipping it means the first ninety days of migrated performance data are contaminated by traffic landing on pages that were never supposed to be in the rotation.

What Should You Watch in the First Ninety Days After Migrating?

Treat the first ninety days as a monitored test, not a settled outcome, because the independent evidence says results genuinely vary.

Do not budget against Google's lift figure. Google reports an average of 7 percent more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS for advertisers using the full AI Max suite versus search term matching alone. That number is Google internal data, it excludes retail, and it is a marketing claim until your account reproduces it. The independent picture: Smarter Ecommerce's analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns found a median revenue increase of 13 percent alongside a median CPA increase of 16 percent, with ROAS outcomes ranging from up 42 percent to down 35 percent. Growth is plausible. Efficiency is not guaranteed.

The weekly review during the ninety day window:

• Search terms report, filtered to the AI Max match type. The source column tells you whether expansion is coming from broad match or keywordless matching. Add negative keywords for junk patterns, sparingly enough that you are not strangling the learning.
• Landing page report for AI Max traffic. Confirm clicks are landing inside your convert bucket. Anything landing on an assist or exclude page is an exclusion you missed.
• CPA or ROAS against your 30 day pre-migration baseline. Learning period turbulence is normal for the first weeks. A sustained efficiency slide past that window is a configuration problem, not a patience problem.
• Asset review for text customization output. Generated copy is policy-reviewed by Google, but brand fit is your review, and AI Brief messaging guidelines are the fix for recurring misses.

The bigger question the migration raises is a strategy question. AI Max moves execution work into Google's models, which makes the human decisions weigh more, not less: what a conversion is worth, which pages represent the business, which searches you refuse to pay for, and whether the account's goal is volume or efficiency this quarter. Accounts with competent settings but nobody owning those decisions is the most common pattern we find in free marketing audits. When the gap is direction rather than button pushing, that is a fractional CMO conversation, and the AI Max transition is forcing it onto the calendar for a lot of businesses at once.

If you are also weighing whether Search is even the right campaign type as automation expands, our comparison of Performance Max and Search campaigns covers that decision.