Picture a general practice ad with a headline the practice never wrote: "See a Veterinary Specialist Today." The practice has no board-certified specialists. The phrase came from a hospital group's website that uses the word correctly, or from a line on the practice's own blog about referring patients to specialists. A Google feature read the site and turned it into an ad.
That feature is AI Max. It can write headlines, pick landing pages and widen the searches your ads show for, all from what's already on your website. For a vet practice it can be useful, once the account is ready. But it needs rules first, and one word in particular needs blocking.
This chapter covers when to switch AI Max on, what it reads, and the text rules a vet practice should set before it writes a single ad.
Chapter 9 Turned AI Max Off. Here's When to Turn It On.
In Chapter 9 we switched AI Max off at launch. Google turns it on automatically for every new Search campaign, and an exact-match Isolation campaign is the wrong place for a feature built to widen your reach.
AI Max has three parts:
- Search term matching shows your ads for searches beyond your keyword list, based on what Google thinks is relevant.
- Text customization writes headlines and descriptions for you, drawing on your site, your existing ads and your keywords.
- Final URL expansion sends people to whichever page on your site Google thinks fits the search best, not just the one you chose.
Google's own setup page says these features depend on conversion-based Smart Bidding to work well. That settles the timing. AI Max waits until the account has steady conversions and a Smart Bidding strategy running on them, the same condition our method sets for Performance Max in Chapter 10. Before that, it has nothing reliable to learn from and a lot of room to wander.
When you do turn it on, try it in one campaign first, compare the results against the campaigns without it, and keep the text rules below in place from the first day.
It Writes From Everything on Your Site
Text customization builds ads from four places, in Google's words: "your domain, landing pages, existing ads, keywords." The first one is the broad one. Your domain means every page Google can read.
On a vet site, that's a lot more than the services you advertise:
- Service pages for wellness, dental, surgery and urgent care.
- Team bios, which often mention credentials, residencies and special interests.
- Pricing pages, wellness plan pages and new-client offers.
- Pharmacy and prescription pages.
- Blog posts on everything from toxic foods to arthritis.
- End-of-life, hospice and pet-loss pages.
Any of those can end up in a headline. Most of the time that's harmless, and sometimes it's helpful. But a few kinds of wording carry rules that AI Max doesn't know about.
Block "Specialist" First
Chapter 8 covered the rule. The AVMA's ethics principles reserve "specialist" for veterinarians who are board-certified by a recognized specialty organization. A vet with a focus on cats or dentistry can say the practice is limited to that work, but shouldn't call themselves a specialist.
AI Max has no way to check that. It sees the word on your site and treats it as a selling point.
The risk is real for mixed practices. One hospital in our example market, Denver, lists 25 board-certified specialists on its website, alongside its emergency service and general care. For that hospital, "specialist" is accurate on a surgery or internal medicine page. On an ad for a routine wellness exam, written automatically from the same site, it wouldn't be. Smaller practices face the same problem in a different form. A blog post saying "we refer complex cases to specialists" gives AI Max the word to borrow.
So for any campaign that promotes general care, add these as term exclusions before AI Max writes anything:
- specialist
- specializing
- board eligible
If the practice has board-certified specialists, run their services in a separate campaign where the word is allowed, and keep it excluded everywhere else.
A Dollar-Sign Exclusion Won't Stop Prices
The obvious way to keep prices out of AI-written ads is to exclude the dollar sign. It doesn't work, and Google says so. Its help page warns that a "{{BODY}}quot; term exclusion won't block generated assets that mention a price. The fix is a messaging restriction, and Google gives the wording: "Don't generate assets with prices." Google also advises adding an example to a restriction, so a vet version might read: "Don't mention prices, like a $59 exam."
This matters more for vets than for most businesses, for the reason Chapter 8 laid out. A price in an ad is a promise the front desk has to keep. If AI Max lifts "$25 first exam" from an old promotion page and puts it in a headline, the owner who arrives expecting $25 gets a different number and leaves a review about it. Unless you've chosen to advertise a specific, current price with its conditions, keep prices out of generated text entirely.
Drug Names Can Go in Ads, Not in Keywords
Vet sites mention prescription medicines all the time: flea and tick products, heartworm prevention, allergy and arthritis drugs. Google has a specific rule for them.
For campaigns in the United States and Canada, Google restricts prescription animal drug terms for drugs meant for animals and not prone to human misuse. You don't need certification to show those terms in ad text or on landing pages. You do need certification to target them as keywords. Animal drugs that are prone to human misuse fall under Google's stricter general drug rules instead.
AI Max complicates this in two ways. Text customization may write a drug name into a headline because it appears on your pharmacy page, which is allowed but may not be what you want. And search term matching widens the searches your ads appear for, so check the search terms report regularly for drug-name searches the campaign has started matching. If you don't want to advertise specific medicines, add a messaging restriction such as "Don't mention prescription drug names."
A Starter Set of Text Rules for a Vet Practice
Google calls these controls text guidelines. Each campaign can have up to 25 term exclusions, which are exact words or phrases to keep out, and up to 40 messaging restrictions, which are plain-language rules about what to avoid.
A starting set for a general practice campaign:
Term exclusions:
- specialist, specializing, board eligible
- cure, guaranteed, painless
- cheapest, lowest price
- 24/7, open 24 hours (unless the practice is)
Messaging restrictions:
- Don't mention prices, like a $59 exam.
- Don't promise a medical outcome or recovery.
- Don't claim emergency or after-hours care.
- Don't mention euthanasia, end-of-life care or pet loss.
- Don't mention prescription drug names.
- Always spell the practice name exactly as it appears on the sign.
Adjust the list to the campaign. An emergency hospital's emergency campaign obviously drops the after-hours restriction. A campaign for a board-certified surgery service drops "specialist."
Two cautions from Google. Text guidelines are still a beta feature. And new rules apply backward: any AI-written asset already running that breaks a new rule stops serving. Google also warns that too many rules, or rules that contradict each other, can remove good assets along with the bad. Start with the list above, then check the generated assets after a week to see what survived.
Keep AI Max's Landing Pages Off End-of-Life Pages
Final URL expansion has the same risk in AI Max that Chapter 10 described for Performance Max. It's on by default, and it can send someone to any page on your site that seems to fit the search, including euthanasia, hospice and pet-loss pages.
The fix is the same too. Add URL exclusions at the campaign level for every end-of-life page, or a rule that covers the whole section. A practice that wants to advertise euthanasia or hospice should give that service a separate campaign, written by a person, with AI Max switched off. Chapter 15 covers how.
Read What It Did Every Week for the First Month
Rules set before launch catch the problems you can predict. The first month shows the ones you can't. Two reports do most of the work.
The search terms report shows every search your ads appeared for, including the new ones search term matching added. For a vet practice, the usual surprises are services the practice doesn't offer ("horse vet," "exotic bird vet," "mobile vet" for a practice with no house calls), searches from towns outside the service area, and the shelter and adoption searches Chapter 5 set out to block. Each one becomes a negative keyword, and the Chapter 5 list grows with it.
The asset report shows the headlines and descriptions AI Max wrote, and which pages Final URL expansion sent people to. Read the generated text line by line. Anything you wouldn't say at the front desk comes out, and if a pattern repeats, such as a claim about same-day availability you can't always keep, turn it into a new messaging restriction so it doesn't come back.
After the first month, a monthly review is usually enough. If the practice changes its services, adds a specialist, or rewrites its website, go back to weekly for a few weeks, since AI Max will start drawing on the new pages right away.
Next: Emergency Care Is a Different Business
Everything so far has treated the practice as one business. Chapter 14 splits it in two: emergency care and wellness care attract different owners at different hours with different questions, and they need separate campaigns, budgets and ads.
The whole guide is on the Google Ads for Veterinarians guide home. And if you'd like help setting AI Max's rules before it writes your ads, it's part of what our Google Ads management does for vet practices.
