A third of the remodeler and builder websites we studied in Raleigh-Durham, our example market, advertise jobs that aren't in anyone's house. Haven Design Build shows commercial projects alongside its custom homes. 2SL Design Build lists commercial architecture and professional offices. Riverstone Construction lists commercial and government work. Riverbirch Remodeling has commercial pages too.
There's nothing wrong with that. Plenty of residential builders take a tenant fit-out between kitchens. But it matters the moment a contractor turns on AI Max, because one of AI Max's features lets Google choose the landing page for each search from anywhere on your website. Chapter 9 showed that this feature, Final URL expansion, comes switched on by default.
Picture the homeowner who searches "kitchen remodel contractor near me," taps your ad and lands on a page about commercial build-outs for medical offices. They didn't search for that, and they won't call about it.
In this guide's build order, AI Max is the roof: it goes on last. Here's why a remodeler waits for it, how to box it in first, and how Google's switchover dates touch a contractor's campaigns.
AI Max Comes Last Because Its Search Matching Can't Run on Hand-Set Bids.
AI Max is a bundle. Google's help page describes two main parts. Search term matching stretches your keywords to searches you didn't list, much like broad match. Asset optimization is a set of creative features, including text customization, where Google writes parts of the ad from your website, and Final URL expansion, where Google picks the page.
In practice, it's broad match with Google writing the copy and choosing the page. That's why we never put it in the launch campaign.
There's also a hard technical reason. Google's AI Max FAQ says plainly that search term matching won't work with manual cost-per-click bidding, because it depends on signals from automated bidding like Maximize Conversions. Chapter 7 built the launch campaign on hand-set bids, one project at a time. AI Max and that campaign don't mix.
AI Max also brings an ad-group setting called locations of interest, which lets an ad group reach people searching for a specific place. Google's location page is clear about the limit: a searcher matched that way still has to meet the campaign's own location targeting. Chapter 9's Presence setting and crew-range map stay in charge.
So AI Max waits until the end. The broad match campaign from Chapter 6 is booking estimates on its own target, Performance Max from Chapter 10 is earning its keep, and the account has months of conversion history to learn from. In our experience, that's late in the first year for most remodelers, and sooner only for big accounts with a lot of volume. If your account isn't there yet, the right AI Max setting today is the one Chapter 9 chose: off. Nothing in this chapter is urgent until the rest of the account is booking estimates without it.
Four of 12 Contractor Sites Also Sell Commercial Work. AI Max Can Send a Kitchen Click There.
Final URL expansion is where a contractor's website structure becomes an advertising problem. Every page on your domain is a possible landing page, and for a firm like Riverstone, whose site lists government work alongside home projects, that includes pages no homeowner should ever land on: the commercial portfolio, the careers page, the blog post about what a basement costs, the promotion that expired last spring.
Before you write a single exclusion, list every page on your site. Your website platform's page list or sitemap will do. Sort each page into one of two piles: pages a homeowner searching for a project should land on, and everything else. For a residential remodeler the first pile is short: the home page, one page per project type from Chapter 4, the gallery and the contact page. The second pile is usually longer than people expect: commercial work, careers, old promotions, the blog, the "about the owner" story, a privacy policy, a page for a neighborhood you no longer serve.
Google gives you three controls, and we set all of them before AI Max goes live:
- URL exclusions. Campaign-level rules that keep specific pages from ever being used as landing pages. Commercial work, careers, the blog and any old offer go on the list first.
- URL inclusions. The opposite approach: name the pages Google may use. Google's setup page notes that if you turn on both URL inclusions and Final URL expansion, Google can still use other pages it judges will perform best, so inclusions alone don't make a fence.
- Brand settings. Brand inclusions and exclusions control which brand names your ads appear alongside, including your own, which Chapter 9 sent to its own campaign.
There's one more catch, and it ties back to Chapter 8. The moment AI Max swaps in a different page, Google drops whatever you pinned, per its own setup instructions; switching on URL inclusions has the same effect. Chapter 8 said to pin text the law requires in every ad, like a contractor's license number in states that require it. If that's you, Google's instruction is direct: to always use pinned assets, turn off Final URL expansion and URL inclusions.
Text Guidelines Keep Google From Promising What Your Crew Can't Deliver.
Text customization writes ad lines from your website. That's useful when your site is current and careful. It's a risk when the site still has an old promotion, a line borrowed from a franchise brochure or a claim your crew can't keep.
Google offers two kinds of guardrails for the text it writes:
- Term exclusions: a 25-item banned-word list per campaign. Capital letters don't matter, and an English word only blocks the English version, so a Spanish-language ad needs its own list.
- Messaging restrictions: as many as 40 written rules, in plain sentences, about topics and tone to stay away from. Google says a rule works better with an example attached.
Google's page also flags a trap worth knowing: a term exclusion can't stop a price from showing up. Excluding the dollar sign won't block a line like "Baths from $15,000." To keep prices out, write a messaging restriction with an example, such as: "Don't mention prices, e.g. $25K or $150 per square foot."
Here's where we start a remodeler's list. Every item is only there if it's untrue for that company:
- "Free estimate" if you charge for design work or credit a design fee later.
- "Lifetime warranty" if your warranty has a term.
- "Same-day" or "1-day install." That's the bath franchises' pitch from Chapter 8, not a general contractor's.
- "Financing" if you don't offer it.
- "Commercial" if the ads are for homeowners only.
- Rival company names, so Google never writes one into your headline.
Search term matching needs the same discipline Chapter 6 gave broad match. For the first month AI Max is on, read the search terms report every few days. Commercial searches, job seekers, do-it-yourself questions and single trades you don't do all go on the negative list the day you find them. AI Max finds new searches; it doesn't know which ones you'd never take.
Then a few messaging restrictions: no prices, no promises about permit timing, no claims about being the best or the cheapest in your area, and no mention of services you've stopped offering.
Dynamic Search Ads Are Being Folded Into AI Max. The Campaign-Level Broad Match Setting Goes First.
If you've run Google Ads for a while, you may have used Dynamic Search Ads, the older campaign type where Google wrote headlines and chose pages from your site with no keywords at all. AI Max is its replacement, and Google is moving accounts over on a schedule.
Google's announcement, updated in June 2026, says the Dynamic Search Ads sunset and automatic upgrade to AI Max begin in February 2027. Two other things move sooner: campaigns using automatically created assets, and campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting, are being upgraded automatically starting in September 2026.
If your account still has an old Dynamic Search Ads campaign running, don't wait for the switch to happen to you. Move it on your own schedule: set up the URL exclusions, the text guidelines and the experiment described here, so the settings are ones you chose rather than ones you inherited the morning Google flipped the account over.
That detail matters for the broad match campaign from Chapter 6. We build it with broad match keywords, set keyword by keyword, not with the campaign-level setting that flips every keyword to broad at once. The account keeps the broad match campaign it built on purpose, and AI Max arrives when you choose it, not when a deadline does.
When you're ready, test it instead of switching it on everywhere. Google's FAQ lays out a ready-made test: half your traffic keeps the campaign you built, half gets AI Max, and you can switch features on for the kitchen ad group while leaving the bath group alone. Then the remodeler's scorecard decides it, the same one every chapter has used: what each booked estimate cost. If AI Max books more estimates at a price your margins can carry, keep it. If it mostly finds commercial searches, job seekers and do-it-yourselfers, the experiment just saved you from finding out the expensive way.
Give the test enough time to mean something. A remodeling lead often books its estimate days after the click, so the last week of any experiment undercounts both sides. We let it run at least four weeks, then wait another week for late bookings before reading the numbers. And we read booked estimates, not clicks or form fills: AI Max is very good at finding more clicks, and clicks were never the problem.
If you'd rather have us set the fences and run the test, our Google Ads management adds AI Max to a contractor account only after the rest of the build is booking estimates.
Next: Homeowners Turned Away as "Too Small" Should Have Seen the Minimum Before They Clicked.
Chapter 14, the first of three bonus chapters, covers what to do when "too small" is the real reason a lead goes nowhere, and how to say your minimum before the homeowner calls.
This chapter is part of Google Ads for Contractors, our sixteen-chapter guide for residential general contractors and construction companies anywhere in the US.
