Google's AI Max does not just pick your keywords anymore - it picks the landing page it sends paid traffic to, off your own site. Lisa Raehsler, founder and principal SEM strategist at Big Click Co, has the spreadsheet of what you can still opt out of and what turns mandatory in February. Her verdict on the rollout: another Tuesday of Google taking control away from advertisers.
Lisa has spent her career in paid search and paid social, contributes to Search Engine Journal, and writes The Paid Media Mix. She came back on Unscripted SEO the same day a batch of AI Max features flipped live in her own accounts, and what she describes is the shift SEO is already living through, arriving on the paid side. Nobody types "project management software" anymore. They type what kind of project management software works with Slack for a small team working internationally. Keywords cannot hold that. Intent can. The full written recap of the conversation is here.
In this episode
Keywords triggering ads gives way to intent triggering ads - and the old ad-group buckets are what breaks first.
AI Max reads the intent, writes the ad, and picks the page on your site to answer the query. That third step is the one nobody budgeted for.
Site quality just became a paid media problem. If Google chooses the page, thin and generic pages spend your ad budget, which is exactly when the paid team and an SEO advisory conversation stop being separate meetings.
It works beautifully for e-commerce, movies and theaters. It falls apart for B2B, for thin sites, and for anyone running priced landing-page variants.
Third-party landing page tools now need an explicit opt-out if you do not want Google routing around them.
The window is shorter than it looks - some features already flipped and can still be opted out of, a bigger batch goes mandatory in February.
Local Service Ads are migrating into Google Ads, and Google Guaranteed still means background checks plus industry-specific licensure.
ChatGPT ads are low converting and only loosely matched, served against the whole topic rather than the actual question.
The automation is really imperfect, which is where humans stay in the loop - the exclusions, the ad copy and the page all still need human-certified, expert-sourced content behind them.
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