Your Performance Max campaign uses a variety of settings to achieve your marketing goals. You may wonder how these settings work together and which controls are right for your business.
Here are a few examples of how different types of advertisers can use these controls:
| Advertiser goal | Common control combinations | Strategic rationale |
| Maximize reach with AI guidance (recommended) | Final URL expansion turned on + search themes | This is the foundational setup for Performance Max, designed to balance automation with strategic input. The AI explores your entire site for conversions, while Search themes guide it toward the most valuable customer queries for optimal performance and discovery. |
| Expand reach while excluding specific URLs | Final URL expansion turned on + search themes + URL exclusions | Maintains the broad reach of automation while preventing the AI from sending ad traffic to unwanted pages. Use this to exclude non-commercial content like blog, policy, or support articles, ensuring traffic lands on relevant, product-focused pages. |
| Ensure brand safety on search queries | Final URL expansion turned on + search themes + negative keywords | A key benefit here is that Final URL expansion expands reach and optimizes landing pages for relevant queries. To guide the AI toward relevant searches and to help avoid undesirable or brand-unsafe searches, add specific search themes to your asset groups and apply negative keywords as needed. |
| Target a specific section of your site | Final URL expansion turned on + URL_CONTAINS (URL rules) |
Concentrates ad traffic on a particular subdirectory of your website, for example, a "promotions" section. This offers focus but may limit overall performance by restricting the AI's scope. |
| Exercise precise landing page control | Final URL expansion turned off + page feeds | Restricts your campaign to a specific list of landing pages. This provides maximum control but sacrifices the AI's ability to find conversion opportunities on other relevant pages of your site. |
