Performance Max
PMax hides its search terms and limits what you can exclude. What you can actually see, what you can actually block, and how to work inside the 10,000-negative ceiling per campaign.
Performance Max New Customer Goal Won't Block Bad Queries
The new customer acquisition goal changes who Performance Max bids on. It doesn't change what they searched, so "how to clean leather boots" still gets paid for, and it can end up getting more budget.
Performance Max Branded Search Spend and How to Measure It
Performance Max often looks efficient because it takes credit for people who were already searching your brand name. Here is how to measure how much of that credit is real, using search term labels and a four-week before/after test.
Performance Max Negative Keywords Not Working? Here's Why
You added a negative keyword to Performance Max and the term still shows up in your reports. Usually the block worked and the report is misleading you. Sometimes the negative never covered that query in the first place. Here's how to tell which one you're dealing with.
Performance Max Cannibalizing Search? Compare the Terms
Overlap between Performance Max and Search shows up as the same search terms in both campaigns, so you can measure it. Usually the cause sits in the Search campaign, and a negative keyword in PMax won't fix it.
Performance Max Audience Signals Are Not Targeting
Many advertisers treat a Performance Max audience signal like an audience set to Targeting in Search: a fence around who sees the ad. It isn't a fence, and budgets get planned as if it were.
When One PMax Asset Group Pulls Irrelevant Traffic
A Performance Max campaign is not one audience — it is several asset groups competing for the same budget, and one bad one can absorb most of it. Here is how to find the culprit and what you can realistically do about it.
How Listing Groups Hide Wasted Spend in Performance Max
Most Performance Max waste advice stops at search terms and placements. A lot of it actually lives in the listing group — the product tree that decides what the campaign is allowed to sell.
Performance Max Placement Exclusions, Honestly
Performance Max will show you the placements it bought, but it will not let you exclude them inside the campaign. Here is what the account-level controls actually cover, where they stop, and which levers move more money.
Performance Max vs Search: Which Wastes More?
Most Performance Max vs Search comparisons argue about control and incrementality. This one ignores all that and asks a narrower question: in which campaign type does your money leak faster, and which leak is harder to plug?
What the PMax Search Terms Report Actually Shows
The Performance Max search terms report you see in the Google Ads interface and the rows the API returns are two different objects with two different shapes. Knowing which one you are looking at changes what you can conclude from it.
Performance Max Brand Exclusions and What They Miss
Brand exclusions in Performance Max are a brand-list filter, not a search term filter. They stop your own name and a few competitors — and leave every other wasteful query running.
Search Themes vs Negative Keywords in Performance Max
Search themes tell Performance Max where to look; negative keywords tell it where it may not go. Most guides explain the first and skip the second, which is why the same accounts keep paying for the same bad terms.
Where Performance Max Wasted Spend Hides
Performance Max spends in two places: inventory that starts with a query, and inventory that doesn't. Only the first one leaves a search term you can read — here is how to work that half properly and stop pretending you can fix the other.
Negative Keywords in Performance Max and the 10,000 Cap
Performance Max accepts up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign and no shared lists, which turns a two-minute job into a maintenance problem across every campaign you run. Here is where the negatives go, which match type survives PMax, and the three things negatives will never fix.
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