Google has updated the Google Ads Help page that defines a Performance Max channel to say that the channel definitions it uses for Performance Max reporting will reach standard Search and Shopping campaign reports in 2027. "This will be available for standard Search and Shopping reports in 2027," the page reads in a note beneath its list of seven channels. PPC News Feed reported the change on November 4, 2026, crediting Hana Kobzová with spotting it. Google has published no announcement, no month and no description of what the Search and Shopping version will contain.

The definitions are the ones Google already uses to split Performance Max and Demand Gen results across seven surfaces. Each is drawn around a surface rather than a format, and some of the boundaries do not match the way standard Search campaigns have reported traffic until now.

In Short

Google says the channel breakdown it uses in Performance Max and Demand Gen reports, which splits results across seven surfaces such as Google Search, YouTube, Maps and partner sites, will come to standard Search and Shopping reports in 2027. That matters to anyone running Search or Shopping campaigns, because those campaigns already serve beyond google.com, and the new definitions draw some lines differently, for example counting ads in YouTube search results as YouTube rather than as Search partners. Google has not said when in 2027 this happens, whether it is a new report or a new segment in existing ones, or how older data will line up.

What the help page says

The page, titled "Definition: Performance Max channel," sits in Google's glossary of Google Ads terms. Its opening definition is short. "A Performance Max channel is broadly defined as the surface where an ad was served," it reads. "A single channel can include multiple ad formats. For example, a YouTube channel might include video, text, image, and product ads."

Seven channels follow: Google Search, Google Display Network, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and Search partners. Then comes the note that carries the news. According to the page, "These channel definitions are visible in the Performance Max channel report and the Demand Gen channel report," with a qualifier that the Demand Gen report covers Demand Gen-specific channels. The next sentence is the one about 2027.

The wording leaves room for more than one reading. "This" in Google's sentence refers back to the channel definitions, not to a named report. The note could mean a dedicated channel performance report for Search and Shopping campaigns, of the kind Performance Max campaigns have had since 2025, or it could mean that the same seven labels will appear as a segment inside existing Search and Shopping reports. PPC News Feed read it as the former. "Google Ads is set to expand its channel performance report to include standard Search and Shopping campaigns in 2027," its report opens. The help page itself does not use the phrase "channel performance report" for Search or Shopping.

PPC News Feed also wrote that the definitions "will apply to both Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns immediately, with Search and Shopping to follow next year." Google's text is more modest: it says the definitions are visible in the two existing reports, and does not describe a change to how either one counts traffic.

What the note leaves out is as relevant as what it contains. There is no month. There is no mention of the Google Ads API, Google Ads Editor, manager accounts or Search Ads 360. Nothing says whether data from before the change will be reclassified, and nothing addresses App or Video campaigns.

Seven channels, drawn by surface

The channel table on the page is where the practical detail sits. Each row describes where an ad appears, and several rows exclude inventory that might intuitively belong there.

Google Search covers "any ad that serves on" Google.com, excluding google.com/maps, and the Google Search app, excluding the Discover feed. Map results and Discover placements inside Google's own search properties are therefore not counted as Search.

Google Display Network covers ads on the network, "which has 2 million websites and apps." Ads on Gmail and YouTube "are excluded here, which are classified under their respective channels." The 2 million figure is not the only one Google uses. Its Display Expansion help page describes the network as reaching more than three million websites, videos and apps, while Google's May 2026 material gave more than 2 million.

YouTube includes "any ad that runs on YouTube, such as video and non-video ads." The page gives two examples: "text ads can appear in YouTube search results and image ads can appear in the YouTube home feed."

Discover covers ads in the Discover feed. Gmail covers ads "that run in individuals' Gmail accounts." Maps includes "ads that run on Google Maps and Waze," which folds Google's navigation app into the same line as Maps.

Search partners is defined as "partner websites within the Search Network that partner with Google to display ads and free product listings." The row ends with the exclusion that matters most for Search advertisers: "Ads shown on YouTube search results are excluded here and classified under the YouTube channel."

Shopping is not a channel at all in this scheme. "Shopping inventory is designated by the 'Ads using product data' segmentation available in the channel performance report," according to a second note on the page. Google's separate help page on the channel report describes that segment as covering Shopping ads across Google Search, YouTube search, Maps and Search partners, plus dynamic remarketing on the Display Network, and says other Merchant Center formats on Gmail, and video ads with products on YouTube and Discover, are not yet included. A Shopping ad on google.com is counted under Google Search, flagged as product data, rather than in a Shopping channel.

Google's own pages disagree on Search partners

The glossary page lists seven channels. A second Google help page, "About Performance Max channels," lists six: Search, Maps, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and the Google Display Network. On that page, Search partners sits inside the Search channel, with Maps search and YouTube search excluded, rather than as a channel of its own. The channel report itself, according to its help page, segments results by all seven, including Search partners.

The difference is not cosmetic for Search campaigns. Search partners is the network Google sells as an extension of Search, and it sits at the centre of the Performance Max opt-out test described below. Which of the two schemes applies in 2027 determines whether partner traffic gets its own line or is merged into Search.

What could shift in Search and Shopping reports

Standard Search and Shopping campaigns do not lack reporting today. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Product Liaison, pointed advertisers to network segmentation and placement reporting in Search and Shopping when she answered questions on channel controls on October 16, 2026. Site-level placement data for the partner network has existed since Google enabled full placement reporting for the Search Partner Network on August 19, 2025, covering Search, Shopping and App campaigns, though with impression data only.

The issue is where the lines fall. Google's definition page for search partners in standard Search campaigns says the network extends search ads to hundreds of non-Google websites as well as YouTube, including YouTube search results and watch pages. Under the channel definitions, YouTube search results belong to the YouTube channel, not Search partners. If the "channel definitions" Google refers to are applied to Search campaigns as written, impressions and clicks from YouTube search that sit under Search partners in today's Search reporting would move to a YouTube line. Google's note does not spell this out; it is PPC Land's reading of the two pages side by side.

Maps is the second boundary. The Google Search channel excludes google.com/maps, and the Maps channel includes Waze. Any Search ads served in Maps results would, on the same reading, be separated from Google Search. Waze inventory reached Performance Max for store goals campaigns in the United States on November 6, 2025, and the definition page does not say whether Search campaigns serve there.

None of this changes where ads run. It changes how the same delivery is labelled, which matters for any comparison across the switchover. A Search campaign whose partner share drops in 2027 reports might simply be reporting YouTube search separately.

Reporting arrives after the controls

For Search and Shopping, the order is the reverse of Performance Max. Performance Max advertisers received channel reporting in 2025 and are still waiting for full channel controls. Search and Shopping advertisers have had network opt-outs for years, and since October have also had channel prioritization.

Google introduced that feature on October 14, 2026, alongside a percentage budget allocation for low-priority channels. In Search campaigns, the channels that can be ranked are Google Search, search partners and the Google Display Network. In Shopping campaigns, they are Google Search and Google search partners. Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns group Google's own surfaces, including Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover, into a single "Google channels" tier.

The categories do not line up. Prioritization in Search works with three buckets; the channel definitions describe seven surfaces and, on the reading above, would move YouTube search out of the partner bucket. Google has not said whether the prioritization settings will be redrawn to match the reporting, or whether a Low priority setting on search partners would continue to cover YouTube search placements once those are reported as YouTube.

A second date sits in the same year. Google's Display Expansion help page says that from February 2027, Search campaigns with Display Expansion will transition automatically to channel prioritization, and the current backend arrangement, which applies a 50% budget allocation to the Display Network, goes away. Google's suggested setting for keeping today's behaviour is the Display Network at Low priority with a 50% daily allocation.

Placement codes and third-party tracking

The channel definitions have a second consequence outside Google Ads. An FAQ on Google's help page for the channel performance report addresses analytics tools directly. "Google Ads uses dedicated placement codes (such as 'm' for Maps, 'gm' for Gmail, and 'dsc' for Discover) instead of the legacy x code," it reads. The same answer tells advertisers that use third-party analytics tools such as GA4 or CRM systems to make sure their tracking filters accept the new placement parameters, so that traffic is not mislabelled.

The answer gives three examples, not a full list. The codes for Google Search, YouTube, the Display Network and Search partners are not in the FAQ, and neither is a date for the change. The FAQ sits on the Performance Max and Demand Gen report page, and Google has not said whether Search and Shopping traffic will carry the same codes in 2027.

For marketers who route Google Ads traffic through their own analytics, the practical effect is that a single legacy value is being split into several. Any rule that classifies traffic on the old "x" value would no longer catch traffic tagged with the new codes, which is the mislabelling Google's FAQ refers to.

How the Performance Max report got here

The channel report the definitions belong to has been built out in stages since April 2025. Google announced channel-level reporting for Performance Max on April 30, 2025, alongside full search terms reporting and asset metrics, listing Search, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, the Display Network, Search partners and Maps. The rollout began on May 30, 2025, in the Insights and reports section, with impressions, clicks, interactions, conversions, conversion value and cost broken down by channel.

By September 30, 2025, the report had gained account-level bulk download, cost data in its visualisation, ROI columns and segmentation by conversion action and ad event type. On November 6, 2025, Google said channel reporting was available in all Performance Max campaigns and that Search partner data and manager account access would follow in the coming weeks.

The data then reached developers. Google Ads API v23, released on January 27, 2026, returned channel breakdowns for Search, Search Partners, Gmail, YouTube, Display, Discover and Maps, replacing the generic MIXED value previously returned for Performance Max traffic, for dates on or after June 1, 2025. An earlier release, v22 in October 2025, had added the segment that separates ads built from Merchant Center product data. API v24.2, released on June 24, 2026, added network segmentation to the Performance Max placement view.

According to Google's current help page, the report covers Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, and any date range after June 6, 2025 can be selected.

Why this matters for advertisers

The channel report was Google's response to a long-standing complaint about Performance Max: that advertisers could not see where their money went. Extending the same labels to Search and Shopping would put Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns on a common description of inventory. Demand Gen, which already has a channel report, is also absorbing standalone Display campaigns, with the full transition expected during 2027.

Search and Shopping are the campaign types where advertisers have kept the most explicit control over where ads appear. A channel breakdown there would show, in Google's own taxonomy, how much of a Search budget reaches surfaces other than google.com. Whether that view is more useful than the network segment advertisers use today depends on details Google has not yet published.

Performance Max shows how slowly reporting and control have moved together. A setting that lets Performance Max advertisers switch off Search partners and the Display Network was first spotted in an alpha test on April 30, 2026, described by Google as a pilot in July, and was still labelled alpha when it reappeared in October. Marvin said on October 16 that Performance Max advertisers can set a 0% allocation on search partners through the new budget controls, which Google describes as best effort.

Several questions remain open. Will Search and Shopping reports use seven channels, six, or only those each campaign type can serve on? Will the YouTube search exclusion change how Search partners spend appears in year-on-year comparisons? Will historical data be reclassified, as the Performance Max report backfilled to June 2025, or start fresh? And will the API, manager accounts and analytics placement codes follow on the same schedule? The help page answers none of these, and Google has not attached a month to the 2027 date.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, through its Google Ads Help documentation, and advertisers running standard Search and Shopping campaigns. The change was reported by PPC News Feed, which credited Hana Kobzová with spotting it.

What: Google's help page defining a Performance Max channel now says the channel definitions used in the Performance Max and Demand Gen channel reports will be available for standard Search and Shopping reports in 2027. The definitions cover seven surfaces: Google Search, the Google Display Network, YouTube, Discover, Maps (including Waze), Gmail and Search partners. Ads in YouTube search results are classified as YouTube rather than Search partners, google.com/maps is excluded from Google Search, and Shopping inventory is marked by an "Ads using product data" segment rather than a channel. A related FAQ says Google Ads now uses dedicated placement codes such as "m," "gm" and "dsc" instead of a legacy "x" code.

When: PPC News Feed reported the update on November 4, 2026. The help page gives 2027 for Search and Shopping, with no month.

Where: In Google Ads reporting for standard Search and Shopping campaigns. The help page names no markets and no restrictions.

Why: Google has not given a reason. The change follows about 18 months of expanding channel reporting for Performance Max, which began with an April 30, 2025 announcement, and arrives in the same year that Display Expansion on Search campaigns moves to channel prioritization and standalone Display campaigns complete their move into Demand Gen. For Search and Shopping advertisers, it would change how existing delivery is labelled, with consequences for year-on-year comparisons and third-party analytics filters.