Google Ads advertisers running AI Max for Search campaigns can now see, query by query, whether a click came from their own keywords or from Google's automated expansion, and which headline, description and landing page were served alongside it. A revised "Search terms and ad combinations" report carrying four source columns was spotted in a live account, according to PPC News Feed, which reported it on October 19, 2026. The site credited the find to Natasha Kaurra, whose LinkedIn post dates from October 13.

Google has not published an announcement of the four columns. Its help page on AI Max reporting, checked on October 25, still describes the view without naming them.

In Short

Google Ads has a report that lists the exact searches that led to an ad, and a new version of it now also says where each piece of the ad came from. For advertisers using AI Max, it shows whether Google's automation or the advertiser picked the search, the landing page, the headline and the description. That makes it easier to see when automation found a click and what message the person actually saw.

What the report shows

According to PPC News Feed, the report "includes detailed visibility into search terms, ad headlines, landing pages, match sources, and asset origins for AI Max for Search campaigns." The site added that it "identifies whether traffic originated from AI Max expanded matches or advertiser-provided sources."

The account where the report appeared shows how that works in practice. Under the Search terms page, three tabs sit side by side: "Search terms", "Search terms and ad combinations" and "Search terms from Dynamic Search Ads." The combinations tab lays out one row per pairing of query and ad, with columns for search term, headline, landing page, campaign, ad group and description, followed by four new attribution columns:

  • Search term match source
  • Landing page source
  • Headline source
  • Description source

Clicks sit at the far right. The account covers a 30-day window from September 13 to October 12, 2026, and the total row records 353 clicks across all search terms.

Two match sources, one asset source

Two values appear in the search term match source column. Most rows read "AI Max expanded matches." A smaller number read "Landing pages and URL inclusions," which points to traffic matched through the advertiser's site content and approved URLs rather than through keyword expansion.

Every visible row reads "Advertiser provided" in the landing page, headline and description source columns. No row in the visible portion of the report shows an asset written or a URL chosen by Google. What label Google applies when text customization generates a headline, or when final URL expansion picks a page, cannot be read from this account.

A car wash account

The rows belong to a car wash business. The search term "car wash near me" appears repeatedly, each time paired with a different headline combination, in a campaign named "DG | Hand Car Wash | Leads - EM_AIMAX" and an ad group named "hand Wash_EM." The top row generated 12 clicks, the next 10, then 9, 7 and 7. Headlines include keyword insertion syntax built around a "Premium Wash $49.99" offer, paired with lines such as "$699 Ceramic Coating Deal," "Where Excellence Meets Care," "Complimentary Café" and "VIP Lounge Access." The description advertises a "$699 Ceramic Coating Special With Paint Correction And 3 Year Warranty Included."

The same query also turns up in a second ad group, "Premium & Enthusiast Wash_EM," for 5 clicks. Variants such as "car wash" and "full service car wash near me" register 3 clicks each.

By PPC Land's count, the 11 rows visible above the fold account for 67 of the 353 clicks, about 19%. That arithmetic matters less than what the layout exposes: a single query split across several headline pairings, each with its own click count. Google Ads has long reported search terms and asset performance separately. This view joins them.

One row stands apart. It belongs to a campaign named "DG | PMAX - Window Tint," shows no ad group, and is matched via "Landing pages and URL inclusions." Its search term cell is blank, its headline reads "Best Auto Tint Shop in FL," and it drew 3 clicks. Campaign names are set by advertisers, so the label alone does not establish that a Performance Max campaign is feeding this view, and nothing Google has published says it does.

What is not established

Several points remain open. Google has not stated when the four columns began rolling out, or whether every AI Max account has them. Its help page, "About reporting in AI Max for Search campaigns," describes the view as "Search terms and ad combinations (formerly known as Search terms and landing pages from AI Max)" and says it "lists the search terms that triggered your ads and shows the headlines, landing pages" involved, but it does not name the search term match source, landing page source, headline source or description source columns, nor list their possible values. The Google Ads API reference lists a resource named AiMaxSearchTermAdCombinationView, though its field documentation could not be retrieved.

The full set of values for each source column is also unknown. The visible rows show two match sources and a single asset source. It is not clear whether the report counts impressions and conversions alongside clicks, since the columns to the right of Clicks are cut off in the account view. And it is not clear whether the blank search term on the window tint row reflects privacy thresholds, which hide low-volume queries elsewhere in Google Ads, or something else.

PPC News Feed framed the change as useful for spotting "mismatches between search intent and ad messaging." Whether the data is complete enough to support that use depends on how many queries Google withholds, a question its documentation does not answer for this view.

How the report got here

The view has been renamed and reshaped several times in 15 months. PPC News Feed reported on July 17, 2025, that a "Search terms and landing pages from AI Max" segment had appeared in the Search terms report. On September 21 and 22, 2026, the same site reported that Google had renamed it "Search terms and ad combinations," citing the help page; at that point the coverage described no new columns. The October report is the first to show attribution columns for each element of the ad.

The underlying product launched in May 2025. Google released an implementation guide for AI Max for Search campaigns that month, describing three components: search term matching, text customization (formerly automatically created assets) and final URL expansion. Google said at the time that AI Max typically delivers 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS, rising to 27% for campaigns relying mostly on exact and phrase keywords.

Practitioners pushed back quickly. In August 2025, early tests of AI Max produced mixed results, with one analysis of roughly 30,000 search terms finding that 99% of impressions had zero conversions, and fewer than half of the search terms matched to a keyword. Visibility became the recurring complaint.

Google's answers came in pieces. In September 2025, Google introduced AI Max expanded matches and expanded landing pages metrics at the all-keywords level of the Keywords tab, quantifying how much traffic came from AI-generated broad match keywords and how much from landing pages or assets. Those were account-level totals. They did not say which headline ran against which query.

In June 2026, Google rewrote its AI Max reporting documentation, adding toggle views to the search terms report and documenting a "Selected by" column in the landing pages report and an "Added by" column in the asset report, where AI-generated text carries the label "Google AI." The new combinations view moves that kind of attribution into the search terms report itself, row by row.

Dynamic Search Ads move closer

The timing connects to a larger migration. On April 15, 2026, Google declared AI Max out of beta and said Dynamic Search Ads campaigns would be upgraded to AI Max, originally from September 2026. Two months later, Google pushed DSA automigration to February 2027, with January 2027 as the cutoff for creating new DSA campaigns. The help page still carries that notice: "starting in February 2027, campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will automatically be upgraded to AI Max."

Advertisers who have relied on DSA reporting will therefore land in AI Max reporting within months. The account view still carries a separate "Search terms from Dynamic Search Ads" tab. The June 2026 documentation listed a fourth view, "Search terms and landing pages from Dynamic Search Ads," which does not appear among the tabs in this account; whether it was removed or simply not available there is not clear.

Why it matters for search advertisers

The search terms report has been the main audit tool for paid search since keywords stopped matching queries literally. AI Max widened the gap between what an advertiser bids on and what triggers an ad, and it added a second gap between what an advertiser writes and what Google may serve. Until now, those two questions were answered in different reports.

A row that reads "AI Max expanded matches" next to "Advertiser provided" for every asset tells an advertiser that automation found the query but the message was theirs. A row with a Google-generated headline on an expanded match, if that value appears in other accounts, would show automation on both sides of the auction. For agencies and brands with strict copy approval, legal disclaimers or regulated claims, that distinction is a compliance question as much as a performance one.

The car wash account also shows something the old view could not. An ad group named with an "EM" suffix inside a campaign labeled "AIMAX" shows its largest volume arriving through AI Max expanded matches, not through the advertiser's keywords. Naming conventions are the advertiser's own, so the suffix proves nothing about match type settings. Still, the pattern is the kind of thing the new columns make visible at a glance.

Advertisers are being asked to hand over keyword selection, copy and landing pages. The price of that, for many, has been reporting that shows what the automation chose.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google Ads advertisers running AI Max for Search campaigns. The report was spotted by Natasha Kaurra and reported by PPC News Feed.

What: The "Search terms and ad combinations" report now shows four source columns - search term match source, landing page source, headline source and description source - indicating whether each element came from AI Max or the advertiser. Google has not documented the columns.

When: Shared on LinkedIn on October 13, 2026, and reported by PPC News Feed on October 19, 2026. The account view covers September 13 to October 12, 2026.

Where: In the Search terms page of the Google Ads interface, as a tab alongside "Search terms" and "Search terms from Dynamic Search Ads."

Why: AI Max can change both the queries that trigger ads and the copy and pages served. The columns show, row by row, which of those choices automation made, ahead of the February 2027 migration of Dynamic Search Ads campaigns to AI Max.