Google is moving your Search campaigns to AI Max in September. Before Google searches wider, it has to see the right orders.

What Google is changing in September

Google announced it in a post in April and sharpened it in June: three older features in Search campaigns are being absorbed into AI Max. Campaigns with broad match switched on at campaign level get AI Max with search term matching enabled. Campaigns with automatically created assets additionally get text customisation, where Google writes ad copy itself. Both happen during September 2026 without you clicking anything.

The third feature, Dynamic Search Ads, was meant to follow in the same month. In June Google pushed that to February 2027. Whoever uses Dynamic Search Ads still has time. Whoever uses broad match or automatically created assets no longer does.

Google recommends doing the upgrade yourself to keep the settings in your own hands. A button to postpone it is not in the announcement. After the upgrade you can switch search term matching off again in the campaign settings. On its own it stays on.

Why tracking decides here

Search term matching does what the name says: Google shows your ad for search queries that are not in your keyword list if Google considers them a fit. A fit is not a linguistic judgement. A fit means similar queries have in the past led to whatever counts as an order in your ad account.

That is the point where a setting in Google Ads turns into a question about your tracking. Google learns from the orders it sees. Not from the ones your shop has.

If your ad account counts every order twice because an app and Tag Manager both report, Google sees twice as many successes as there are and expands more boldly than it should. If half the orders have been missing since the Shopify cut on 26 August, Google learns from half. If the order arrives without an amount, a five euro voucher is worth as much to Google as a five hundred euro order. And if the newsletter sign-up counts as a primary conversion, AI Max now looks for people who sign up for newsletters.

Check one: does every order count exactly once?

Open the list of conversion actions under Goals. There, exactly one action may count as primary for the order. If two entries for the purchase sit there and both are primary, say one from the shop app and one from Tag Manager, Google counts every order twice. Before the upgrade that was a blemish in the statistics. After the upgrade it is the basis on which Google selects new search queries.

The test for this is a real test purchase with a 100 percent discount code. Afterwards the column “Conversions by conversion time” shows you how often that one order arrived. The answer has to be one. What applies to the double order in the Tag Manager overhaul applies here just the same.

Check two: does the amount come with it?

Without an amount Google Ads optimises on count. With search term matching that means Google finds the queries that most often lead to any order at all. Those are rarely the ones that bring the most revenue. Small orders are easier to get than large ones.

Open the conversion action for the order and check whether the value says “Use different values” and whether revenue has arrived in the last weeks. If a fixed value sits there or revenue has been at zero for weeks, the amount is missing. Amount, currency and order number come from your shop system, whether the browser or the server reports the order. A click on a button, as the new visual tagging offers, cannot know the amount.

Check three: does Google know what is worthless to you?

Google does not know your business. It knows clicks and orders. Three places tell Google where not to search.

Negative keywords also apply to search term matching. What is on your list, AI Max does not get. If until now you only had campaigns with exact match keywords, the list is probably short. Now it needs competitor brands, free queries, job searches and everything people search for who never buy.

The brand controls in AI Max define which brands your ad may appear for. Whoever sells branded products often wants that. Whoever appears as a service provider next to the market leader usually does not.

The search terms report is more important after the upgrade than any other view in the ad account. It shows which queries the expansion actually found. In the first weeks it should be read once a week, with a finger on the exclusion list.

And then the question nobody asks: which conversion actions count as primary at all? If next to the order the newsletter sign-up, the click on the phone number and the visit to the contact page are primary too, Google optimises on the average of everything. Only the order and the real enquiry belong primary. Everything else is secondary, so you can see it without Google steering on it.

What you can do now

• Check the campaign list for where campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets are switched on. Those are the campaigns Google moves in September.
• Make a test purchase and check in the column “Conversions by conversion time” that it arrives exactly once and with its amount.
• Extend the negative keyword list before the upgrade and read the search terms report every week for the first four weeks.
• If you are not sure whether Google sees the right orders in your account: the tracking check tests with a real purchase which orders arrive, how often and with which amount. Within two working days you get a report that says what Google is learning right now and what of it is wrong.