Every campaign this guide has built so far keeps a human hand on three things: which searches the location pays for, what its ads say, and which page each click lands on. AI Max loosens all three at once. It's Google's optimization layer for Search campaigns, and for a single business with its own website, the trade can be worth it.
A franchise location is in a different position, because the website usually isn't its own. This chapter covers what AI Max changes, why one of its settings matters more on a franchise brand's domain than anywhere else, how to fence it in, what happens to the brand's required ad lines, and why it's the last thing this guide switches on. The location page findings come from the nine franchise locations we profiled in one example market, Orlando. The settings work the same way for every location.
AI Max Sends Clicks to the Page Google Thinks Fits Best on Your Domain. A Franchise Brand's Domain Holds Every Location's Page.
AI Max isn't a separate campaign type. Google describes it as a layer switched on inside a Search campaign that already exists. Google turns it on by default in new Search campaigns, so a location's opening exact-match campaign needs it switched off at build. Left on, one switch brings three changes for a franchise location: it reaches searches the location never listed, it writes some of the location's ad lines for it, and it can change which page the click lands on.
Of the three, the page-changing feature, which Google calls final URL expansion, matters most for a franchise. Google's description: "To send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your domain when it's likely to result in better performance, enable 'Final URL expansion'." In practice, Google says, it "may replace your Final URL with a more relevant landing page based on the user's search query."
On a single business's website, "your domain" means that business's pages. On a franchise system, it usually means the brand's. In the example market, seven of the nine location pages we profiled sat on the brand's corporate template and one on a brand subdomain, as Chapter 4 found. Those domains typically also hold the other locations' pages and the store locator, and often careers and franchise sales pages too.
Google limits the swap to pages it judges relevant to the search and themed to the ad group. Our reading: on a franchise brand's domain, another location's page for the same service passes that test, and so can the locator Chapter 4 warned about. Google flags the same risk in its Performance Max help. Left unfenced, the feature can land clicks on pages an advertiser didn't choose.
URL Exclusions Are the Fence Around a Location's Own Pages. Without Them, Final URL Expansion Can Pick Other Pages on the Brand's Domain.
Final URL expansion doesn't wait to be asked. Google says it "is turned on by default when you opt in to AI Max." It can be switched off: unchecking it in the campaign settings, or turning off text customization, which Google says "will also turn off 'Final URL expansion'."
When it's on, URL exclusions are the control: a list of pages, or rules matching pages, that final URL expansion isn't allowed to choose. The exclusion field only appears once the page-swapping feature itself is switched on, so a location writes its list in that same panel, the same day.
For a franchise location, the exclusion list writes itself from the brand's site map:
- every other location's page and folder
- the store locator
- careers and hiring pages, which Chapter 5 kept out of the keywords for the same reason
- franchise sales and investment pages
- corporate pages: about us, press, investor relations
The list needs keeping up. Every new location the brand opens adds a page to the domain that a page-by-page fence doesn't cover yet. Rules that match whole folders, such as every other location's path, hold up better than lists of single pages. In a system that grows by a dozen locations a year, the exclusions have to be checked on the same schedule.
Two reports show whether the fence holds. Google says AI Max adds the headlines and URLs that served to the search terms report, and the landing pages report marks which pages AI Max selected. Read both weekly for the first month. A landing page that isn't the location's own means the list is missing something.
There's also a middle path. Google lets an advertiser uncheck final URL expansion while keeping AI Max on, so search term matching and text customization run while, as long as no URL inclusions are added, every click still lands on the page the location chose. For a franchise location that wants AI Max's reach without handing over its landing pages, that's the version we'd test first.
Google Stops Honoring Pinned Headlines Once Final URL Expansion Is On. The Line the Brand Requires Can Drop Out of the Ad.
Chapter 8 left room for one pinned headline: the brand name or a legal line the franchisor requires in every ad. AI Max changes that. Google's help says pinned assets aren't used when the feature picks a different landing page, and in other places says pinning isn't respected at all once final URL expansion is on. Google's own instruction is plain: to always use pinned assets, turn final URL expansion off.
So with final URL expansion on, the ad that shows can leave out the pinned line entirely. For a franchisee whose agreement requires certain wording in every ad, that's not a small detail. It's a compliance question to settle with the franchisor before AI Max goes on, not after an ad runs without the required line.
Text Customization Pulls Ad Copy Off the Landing Page. On the Corporate Template, the Ads Sell the Brand, Not the Store.
Text customization, formerly called automatically created assets, writes ad copy for the location. It can be useful: a location with a thin set of headlines gets more combinations to test. The catch is where the words come from. With both text customization and final URL expansion on, Google says it can "generate a dynamic headline, description, and additional assets to match your landing page content."
Much of what it draws from is the landing page, along with the location's existing ads and keywords. Chapter 4 found that most location pages sit on a brand template, where the location controls only some fields. Chapter 8 found that customers praise the local team far more than the brand. A generator reading a template page will mostly find the brand's copy, and its headlines will sound like it. The location's review themes, its named team and its own offer only make it into those ads if they're on the page.
The same logic runs the other way too. If a location page carries a stale offer or last year's hours, text customization can repeat them in an ad, and the location never wrote that line. Reading the generated headlines in the ad's asset details belongs on the same weekly list.
That makes Chapter 4's advice more important, not less. A location page that fills every local field the template allows, with its staff, its hours, its prices and its own offer, gives text customization something local to work with.
AI Max Buys Searches No One Added as Keywords. We Turn It On Only After a Location's Broad Match Campaign Is Profitable.
The third part, search term matching, is how AI Max finds new searches. Google says it "uses broad match and keywordless technology." In effect, AI Max is broad match taken further, matching searches the location never listed and sometimes never imagined.
Google's case for it is reach. Its help page says advertisers that activate AI Max "will typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS." That's Google's internal figure from 2025, and Google says it covers non-retail advertisers.
Our order doesn't change for it. A new location starts with exact match (Chapter 6), adds broad match in Exploration once it logs about 30 quality conversions a month, adds Performance Max later (Chapter 10), and turns on AI Max last, once the broad match campaign is profitable, with final URL expansion off until the exclusion list is ready. AI Max's own controls include locations of interest, set per ad group, and brand exclusions, set per campaign. Keep the locations of interest inside the location's territory from Chapter 9, and add the brand's own name as a brand exclusion, with the brand negatives still in place, so AI Max doesn't stretch into the brand-name searches Chapter 2 left to the franchisor.
There's a reason it comes last that's specific to franchising. In the Search campaigns, every earlier stage keeps the landing page and most of the copy in the location's hands. AI Max is the first Search setting that can move a location's clicks onto pages and copy the location didn't pick. Performance Max has the same page-swapping feature on by default, which is why the same exclusions, or switching it off, belong in that campaign too. That's fine once the location knows what a good customer costs and can tell when AI Max is helping. Before that, it's guessing on someone else's website.
Who decides matters too. When the franchisor or its agency runs every location from one place, AI Max can be switched on for the whole system in an afternoon, along with a single exclusion list that no single location's page fits. The decision belongs location by location, on each location's own numbers, with an exclusion list written for its own pages. A location that's still in Isolation, or still learning in Exploration, isn't ready, however well AI Max works for the brand's bigger markets.
Next: Franchisors, Franchisees and Brand Funds All Buy Google Ads
Chapter 14, a bonus chapter, turns to the question underneath every setting in this guide: who runs a franchise location's Google Ads account, who pays for it, and who should own it.
All sixteen chapters, from tracking and territories to who runs the ads and franchise development, are on the guide's home page.
Every franchise location in our Google Ads management runs without AI Max until its broad match campaign is profitable, and runs final URL expansion off until its exclusion list is built. Running a location? Ask whoever manages your account whether AI Max is on, and if it is, ask to see the URL exclusions.
