Picture an injury firm's case results page. At the top, in large type: "$2.4 Million Verdict for a Trucking Crash Victim." Further down, a list of settlements. At the very bottom, in small gray print: "Results vary. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome."
No one at the firm would write a Google ad that says "$2.4 Million Verdict" and leaves the second sentence off. The bar rules in most states, and the firm's own good sense, make the two travel together. But a headline has 30 characters, and a sentence about past results doesn't fit in it.
Google's newest automation writes headlines from your website. This chapter covers what AI Max does, why it comes last in the account, the specific way it can break a safeguard a law firm set up on purpose, and the fence to build before it goes live.
AI Max Picks the Searches, Writes the Headlines and Chooses the Page. You Turned It Off in Chapter 9.
AI Max is a set of features layered onto a Search campaign. Google describes three:
- Search term matching. It widens the searches your keywords reach, using broad match and the content of your ads and pages, including searches that match no keyword at all.
- Text customization. It drafts fresh headlines and descriptions out of whatever the firm has already published: the site, the landing pages, the ads, the keywords.
- Final URL expansion. It sends a searcher to whichever page on your site it predicts will work best, not the page you chose.
Google turns AI Max on for every new Search campaign, and turns text customization and Final URL expansion on inside it. That's why Chapter 9 switched it off at the build.
AI Max also has a requirement that keeps it out of the early account entirely. None of the three works properly, by Google's own account, unless the campaign bids automatically toward conversions. Isolation's bids are typed in by a person, so AI Max and Isolation can't share a campaign. In our method, AI Max is the last thing added: after Isolation, after Exploration on broad match, after Performance Max and after Demand Gen. By then the firm knows which searches, pages and ads sign clients. AI Max learns from that record, and the firm measures AI Max against it.
How is that different from Exploration, the broad match campaign from Chapter 6? Exploration widens the searches but still uses the ads and pages the firm wrote. AI Max widens the searches, rewrites the ads and picks the pages, all at once. That's three decisions handed over together, which is why it waits until the firm knows exactly what a good decision looks like.
Five of 11 Firm Sites Show Results Without a Disclaimer Beside Them. AI Max Reads All of Them.
Text customization writes from the whole domain, not just the landing page. So the question for a law firm is simple: what's on the site?
We profiled 11 law firm websites in our example market. Five showed case results with no disclaimer next to them, four of those with dollar figures, and on one the only disclaimer was in the footer. One home page carried a verdict ticker listing larger amounts than the firm's own results page.
Those pages aren't necessarily a problem on the site. A results page with a footer disclaimer may satisfy a state's rule for the site. The problem is what an ad generator can do with them. Chapter 8 covered why a past result needs context: the comment to Model Rule 7.1 warns that a truthful result can mislead without it. Some states spell it out:
- New York requires "Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome" with ads that make results claims.
- Texas says that if an advertised verdict was later reduced, reversed or settled for less, the ad has to show the amount the client actually received, with equal or greater prominence.
Neither fits in a 30-character headline. And Google doesn't publish which sentences text customization will lift or how it chooses them. That's the risk, stated as narrowly as the evidence allows: AI Max can write from a results page, and a headline can't carry the disclaimer.
The cheapest fix starts on the site, before any setting. Put the disclaimer next to every result, not only in the footer, the way the largest national injury firm in our sample prints "Results may vary" under its results and reviews. Make the home page ticker match the results page, with the same cases and the same amounts. Write results the way your state wants them advertised, because once AI Max is on, every page of the site is potential ad copy. A results page built to be quoted safely is safer for AI Max, for Performance Max's own text, and for the person reading it.
AI Max Unpins a Results Disclaimer the Moment It Picks a Different Page.
Chapter 8 offered one exception to launching unpinned: a results disclaimer pinned to Description 1, so every version of the ad shows it. Google's own example of a good pin is a disclaimer.
AI Max changes that. Google's setup page includes a small table. With text customization on and Final URL expansion on, the last column reads: "Pinned RSA assets won't be respected." Google's explanation is that pinned assets "aren't used if a more relevant URL is chosen, because they may not match the customer's intent." The same applies when URL inclusions are turned on.
In other words, the one safeguard a firm deliberately pinned in place stops being guaranteed the moment AI Max sends a searcher somewhere else. A firm that relies on that pin can't run both features without another fence.
Twenty-Five Banned Words and Forty Rules Are the Fence. Write Them Before AI Max Goes Live.
Google gives AI Max campaigns a set of controls called text guidelines. They're still in beta, and Google says so, but they're the main fence a law firm has. They come in two kinds.
Term exclusions. A list of as many as 25 words or phrases Google's writer is forbidden to use in this campaign. They're not case sensitive and they're tied to one language, so an English exclusion doesn't stop the Spanish equivalent. One catch: excluding "{{BODY}}quot; doesn't stop prices. For prices, Google points to the other control.
Messaging restrictions. Up to 40 plain-English rules per campaign. Google's own examples include "Don't imply our products are discounted" and "If promoting a discount, always include 'T&C apply.'" Restrictions apply across languages, and Google recommends including an example in each one.
A law firm's starting list might look like this:
- Restriction: "Don't mention verdict amounts, settlement amounts or any case results, e.g. '$2.4 Million Verdict.'"
- Restriction: "Don't generate assets with prices."
- Restriction: "Never say a lawyer is a specialist, an expert or certified, e.g. 'Certified Injury Specialist.'"
- Restriction: "Never promise an outcome, e.g. 'We'll Win Your Case.'"
- Restriction: "Don't name other law firms or lawyers, e.g. 'Better Than [Firm Name].'"
- Restriction: "Don't suggest bad things will happen if someone doesn't call, e.g. 'Lose Your Case Without Us.'"
- Term exclusions: "guarantee," "guaranteed," "best," "#1," "specialist," "expert," "million," "verdict," "settlement," and the names of the largest rival firms.
Then the pages. AI Max lets you exclude URLs from Final URL expansion, as a campaign-level control. Exclude the results page, the blog, careers, the attorney login and any bio that lists awards without the context your state requires. Two more controls round it out: brand exclusions, which keep the campaign away from searches for a rival firm's name, and locations of interest, set ad group by ad group.
Write all of it before AI Max is switched on, so the very first generated headlines are already inside the fence. Google notes that guidelines added later also apply to assets it has already generated, but anything that ran in the meantime has already been seen.
AI Max Earns Its Place in Signed Cases, Not Clicks, and Gets Read Every Week.
Google built a test for this choice. It doesn't build a second campaign. It divides the firm's existing one, so part of the traffic keeps running the old way and the rest gets AI Max. Google says this gets results faster and with fewer setup errors. By default the experiment turns on all three features in the trial arm, so set the text guidelines and URL exclusions before it starts.
Judge it the way every chapter in this guide judges a change: qualified consultations and signed cases, not clicks or conversions Google counts on its own. Give it long enough to see consultations turn into cases, usually several weeks at minimum for an injury practice.
Every Monday while it runs, someone at the firm reads three things:
- The search terms report labels AI Max's own matches separately, and shows whether each came from widening a keyword or from no keyword at all. Add negatives exactly as Chapter 5 did.
- The combined view of search term, headline and landing page shows what a real searcher saw. Read the headlines. Any headline that names a result, a price or a credential the firm can't claim means a missing restriction.
- Saved copies. In states that want ads filed or kept, as Chapter 9 explained, save the generated headlines along with the ads you wrote. Whether each generated variation counts as a new ad is still a question for your bar.
If the trial arm brings in more signed cases at an acceptable cost, and the weekly read turns up nothing the firm wouldn't have written, apply it. If not, the control arm is still running, and nothing about the account has been lost.
Every State Writes Its Own Rules. A Search Ad Has to Follow All of Them.
AI Max is where Google's automation meets the bar's rules most directly, but the rules touch every chapter of this guide: results, testimonials, the word "specialist," rival names as keywords, filing requirements. Chapter 14 goes through them state by state.
See every chapter on the guide home. Want AI Max tested inside the rules, or kept off until the account is ready? See our Google Ads management.
