How to read AI Max search terms and ad combinations

What the view shows

Google's help page describes it as a list of the search terms that triggered your ads, with the headlines, landing pages, campaigns and ad groups that made up the full customer ad journey. When Google writes headlines with text customization and picks pages with final URL expansion, this view is where you see what actually served for a given search.

Google's help page lists three other views you can toggle to from the top right corner of the report: search terms, search terms from Dynamic Search Ads, and search terms and landing pages from Dynamic Search Ads.

How I'd use it

These are my suggestions, not steps from Google.

1. Give it two weeks first. Google says to wait at least 2 weeks after turning on AI Max before making changes like adding negatives. I'd hold off on judging this view until then too.
2. Read headlines next to the search term. If a headline Google wrote doesn't match what the person searched, that's the first thing I'd flag.
3. Check the landing page column. If a search went to a page you'd never send it to, add it as a negative URL. Google says you can select the row and use Add as negative keyword or Add as negative URL right from the report.
4. Pull off-brand assets. Text assets created by text customization are marked "Google AI" in the Added by column of the asset report. Remove the ones that don't fit.

One filter to watch

Google notes that filtering the Match type column for "AI Max" may show lower numbers, because that filter doesn't count "Other search terms." My advice: don't read a low filtered total as AI Max doing less than it is.

For the totals, Google points to two rows at the bottom of the keywords report: "Total: AI Max expanded matches" and "Total: AI Max landing page matches."