AI Max is Google's newest layer on top of a Search campaign. It widens the searches your ads can match, writes extra headlines and descriptions for you, and picks which page on your site each click lands on. Every Search campaign a community creates starts with it switched on, and Chapter 9's launch checklist took it off for that reason.
That was the right call at launch, and for most of a community's first months. AI Max works from what the account already knows: its conversions, its ads and its website. A new account doesn't know enough yet, and a senior living website says things an ad shouldn't. This chapter covers what AI Max does, when it's worth testing, and the fences to build before it writes a single line.
AI Max Writes Headlines From Your Site and Chooses Which Page a Family Lands On
AI Max bundles three features:
- Search term matching: reaches searches beyond your keywords that Google judges relevant.
- Text customization: composes extra ad lines of its own, drawing on the community's existing ads, its keyword list and the pages on its site.
- Final URL expansion: sends a click to whichever page on your site Google predicts will perform best, not only the page you chose.
Google notes that these features need a bidding strategy built on conversions to work well, and final URL expansion only runs if text customization is on. Put together, that means ad copy you didn't write, sent to pages you didn't pick, for searches you didn't list.
In most industries, the worst outcome is an awkward headline that someone fixes on Monday. In senior living, the risk is a regulated word.
AI Max Comes Last, After Search Is Booking Tours on Its Own
For a senior living community, AI Max is the final switch we'd consider, and plenty of accounts never need it. The account needs Isolation and Exploration running, conversion tracking the sales office trusts, and enough tours for bidding to learn from. AI Max's matching and writing lean on that conversion data, and without it they're guessing.
When you do test it, test it as an experiment against the campaign you already have, with your term exclusions and URL exclusions in place before the first impression. Judge it on booked tours that show up, the same measure Chapter 7 used, not on clicks. And read the search terms and generated text every week at first. If it starts matching nursing home searches or writing care claims your license doesn't cover, Chapter 5's keyword discipline and the word list below are the fix. If it can't stay inside the lines, turn it off. The account worked without it, and the tours it was already booking don't depend on Google writing a single extra headline.
Your Website Holds Words Your License Doesn't Cover
Most senior living websites say more than their ads ever would. Families' stories on the testimonials page. A blog post explaining the stages of dementia. An "About our care" page written before the latest licensing change. A partner community's memory care page linked from the footer.
You wrote those pages to inform families, not to advertise a service. AI Max doesn't know the difference. Text customization draws from your landing pages, and final URL expansion can send a click to other pages on your site it judges relevant to the ad group.
Two controls help:
- URL exclusions keep final URL expansion from sending traffic to pages you list, or to pages matching a rule you set. Exclude the blog, the dementia education pages and any page describing a care level you aren't licensed to advertise.
- URL inclusions work the other way, at the ad group level, telling AI Max which pages it may use.
Search term matching raises the same issue from the other side. AI Max can reach searches beyond your keywords that Google judges related, and in senior living the neighbors are close: Chapter 5 showed how often nursing home, home care and assisted living searches overlap. Leave Chapter 5's license-based negative lists attached to any campaign running AI Max, and read its search terms before you trust it with more budget.
Better still, fix the source itself, on the website. If a page describes a service your license doesn't cover, it's a risk whether or not an ad points to it.
"Memory Care" and "Alzheimer's" Carry Legal Weight in Several States
States license assisted living, and several also regulate the words a community uses to advertise care for people with dementia. The rules differ at every state line, sometimes sharply. Four examples show the range:
- Florida passed a law in 2026 creating a memory care services license. Under Section 429.076 of its statutes, an assisted living facility that "advertises or otherwise holds itself out as providing memory care services" will need that license. The state has until June 1, 2027, to write the rules, and the statute says they must list terms a facility can't advertise without the license, including "memory care," "dementia care" and "Alzheimer's care," a "facility" version of each, and "memory care services" and "memory care residents." Facilities without the license can still describe the supportive services they offer, without those words.
- Texas requires certification before a facility advertises "specialized care" for people with Alzheimer's disease. Its rule lists phrases anyone can use, such as "short-term memory loss, confusion, or forgetfulness." A Texas community that advertises memory care must also give residents a written disclosure saying whether it's certified, and every Texas assisted living facility must show its license or ID number in all advertisements.
- California requires a residential care facility that advertises special care for dementia to disclose those special features to the state and describe them in writing to prospective residents.
- Illinois bars advertising dementia services that don't meet the requirements of its dementia services law.
Your state may have none of these rules, one like them, or something stricter. Before AI Max writes a single line, find out which care words your license lets you advertise. Your licensing agency and your attorney are the sources; this chapter isn't legal advice.
To find your own rules, start with your state's assisted living licensing law and the agency rules under it, and search them for "Alzheimer," "dementia," "memory care" and "advertis." The facility names change too: California calls these residential care facilities for the elderly, Texas licenses Type A and Type B facilities, and Florida uses assisted living facility. Search under your state's name for the license, or the rules you need won't turn up, and ask the agency directly if the wording leaves you unsure.
Now picture AI Max in a community whose license doesn't cover memory care. Its website mentions a resident with Alzheimer's in a family story, links to a blog post about dementia, and describes its "memory support" activities. Text customization can turn any of that into a headline. Nothing in AI Max checks your license before it does.
The rules we read draw a similar line. In Texas, for example, medication reminders, meal and activity reminders and escort service are open to any licensed community. Claims of a specialized dementia or memory care program are where states tend to require a license, a certification or a disclosure. AI Max writes on both sides of that line without knowing it's there.
Text Guidelines Can Block Twenty-Five Words per Campaign, in a Beta Google Still Calls Experimental
Google's text guidelines add two controls to the text AI Max writes. The first, term exclusions, is a blocklist of exact words and phrases. A campaign gets 25 slots, capitals don't matter, and a word blocked in English stays allowed in Spanish. Messaging restrictions are instructions in plain language, up to 40 per campaign, such as "don't claim we provide memory care." Google says both apply to text it has already generated as well as new text.
Messaging restrictions are where senior living's other rules fit. A community might add "don't describe us as a nursing home or skilled nursing," "don't claim medical care we don't provide," "don't state or imply a price" if your pages can't back one up, as Chapter 4 warned, and "don't mention government programs or insurance." Write each one plainly, and add an example when you can; Google says examples make them work better.
For a community whose license doesn't cover memory care, a starting term exclusion list would include the three root terms Florida's new law names, "memory care," "dementia care" and "Alzheimer's care," plus close variants families and websites use: "memory support," "dementia," "Alzheimer's," "memory loss care." Add your own state's exact phrases if you have slots to spare. Where a state certifies "specialized" dementia care, as Texas does, a community without that certification should add "specialized Alzheimer's care" and "specialized dementia care" too.
Treat that list as a seatbelt, not a guarantee. Google calls the whole feature an experimental beta with limitations. Twenty-five terms go quickly once you add variants. And the exclusions only work in the language you enter them in.
Record-Keeping Rules Can Reach Your Ads. Google Writes Lines You Never Saw.
Some state rules add one more line that matters for automation. Florida's new law, for example, says a facility without the memory care license that advertises its supportive services must keep a copy of those ads in its records, and the state agency examines them when the license comes up for renewal.
With AI Max on, some of your ads are text you never typed. Google generates headlines and descriptions and mixes them with yours. Keep a record of what ran: review the generated text in the asset report regularly, save a copy, and remove anything that crosses your state's line. Wherever you are, if a regulator asks what you advertised, "Google wrote it" won't be an answer anyone accepts.
The same habit protects you everywhere else. Chapter 8 warned that a family who reads a promise in your ad will check it on the tour. The same is true of a line Google wrote for you.
Next: The Referral Sites and the Leads You Own
Chapter 14 turns to the business that sits between many families and many communities: the referral sites, what they cost, and why the leads you generate yourself behave differently.
All fifteen chapters are in Google Ads for Senior Living, including the campaign settings chapter where AI Max was first switched off. If you'd like us to keep your community's ads inside your state's rules, see our Google Ads management.
