Google Ads has published a help page setting out how Smart Bidding Exploration works across Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns, setting out the rules for the feature's move beyond Search. The page, titled "How Smart Bidding Exploration for Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns works", lets advertisers using Target ROAS bidding accept a return between 5% and 30% below their target in exchange for bids on queries the campaign already qualifies for but was losing. The change was first reported on October 22, 2026, by PPC News Feed, which credits Hana Kobzová with spotting it. The Google page itself carries no publication or update date.

In Short

Google has a setting that tells its bidding system it can earn a bit less per pound or dollar of ad spend so it can try for sales it would otherwise skip, and that setting now has written rules for shopping and Performance Max ads, not just search ads. It matters for online stores that pay Google based on return on ad spend, because turning it on means accepting a lower return in the hope of more total sales. What changes is that retailers can pick how much return to give up, from 5% to 30%, but they lose the setting if they group those campaigns under a shared bid strategy.

What the help page says

The Google Ads help page opens with an analogy rather than a definition. "Think of your targeting (keywords, DSA, URL expansion) as a fishing pond, full of available traffic," according to Google. "Using Smart Bidding Exploration doesn't change the size of your pond or the types of fish in it. Instead, think of this bidding strategy as your fishing rod and reel."

The mechanism is simpler than the metaphor. "Smart Bidding Exploration lowers your target ROAS by up to the tolerance you select," according to the page. "This provides the algorithm with the flexibility to bid higher on high-potential queries."

Three points sit under that sentence. The first sets the range: advertisers can choose a Target ROAS tolerance between 5% and 30%. The second limits scope. According to Google, the feature "doesn't expand your broad match keywords or target outer limits. It helps you capitalize on long-tail queries you already qualify for but missed due to tight Target ROAS constraints." The third covers retail inventory: "In Performance Max campaigns with a Google Merchant Center feed, a single toggle turns on exploration on both Search and Shopping traffic."

That second point draws a line between this feature and Google's other automation. Smart Bidding Exploration is a bidding control, and the page states plainly that it does not change which queries a campaign can enter. Reach still comes from keywords, Dynamic Search Ads and URL expansion - the "pond" in Google's framing. Exploration changes how aggressively the system bids inside it.

The worked example

Google gives one numerical illustration. "If your campaign Target ROAS is 200%, and you opt into Smart Bidding Exploration at a 10% Target ROAS tolerance, you agree to accept a return on ad spend 10% lower than the target provided. As a result, your effective target changes to 180%," according to the page.

The reduction is relative, not a subtraction of percentage points. A 10% tolerance on a 200% target removes 20 points, not 10. By the same arithmetic, a PPC Land calculation shows the maximum 30% tolerance would take a 200% target down to 140%, and a 500% target down to 350%.

The page then gives an accuracy band. "You can expect to come within approximately 15% of that 180% effective target when assessing performance over 1 to 2 conversion cycles," according to Google. Read the same relative way, 15% of 180% is 27 points, which a PPC Land calculation puts at a range of roughly 153% to 207%. The page does not say whether the band is symmetrical, does not define a conversion cycle, and gives no figure for how often campaigns fall outside it. At the lower end, a campaign with a 200% target and a 10% tolerance could therefore return about 153% and still be within what Google describes as expected.

Eligibility

The eligibility list is short. "Eligible campaigns include Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns, with or without a Merchant Center feed," according to the page. "For Performance Max campaigns without a feed, exploration applies to Search traffic only."

Bidding strategy is the hard requirement: campaigns must use Target ROAS bidding. Campaigns on Target CPA, Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value without a target are not covered by the page.

Budget is the soft one. "Campaigns using Smart Bidding Exploration shouldn't be limited by budget. Budget constraints block the algorithm from exploring new traffic areas. If a campaign hits a budget limit, the system may temporarily pause exploration," according to Google. The page does not say how long such a pause lasts, how an advertiser would know it had happened, or whether exploration restarts automatically when budget becomes available.

The portfolio restriction

The most consequential limit for larger retail accounts concerns shared bid strategies. "Portfolio bid strategies (both in Google Ads and Search Ads 360) are only compatible with Smart Bidding Exploration for Search campaigns. Shopping and Performance Max campaigns must use campaign-level bid strategies," according to the page. "Moving these retail campaign types to a portfolio bid strategy will automatically deactivate Smart Bidding Exploration."

A separate note repeats the point: "Portfolio bidding is currently not supported for Shopping and Performance Max campaigns running Smart Bidding Exploration." The word "currently" leaves room for a change, but the page gives no timeline.

A portfolio bid strategy groups several campaigns under one automated goal so they pool conversion data and are judged against a shared average. Retailers with many Shopping campaigns split by brand, margin or category often use them for that reason. Under the new rules, those advertisers face a choice for each retail campaign: keep the shared strategy, or move to a campaign-level Target ROAS and gain access to exploration. The deactivation is automatic, so a portfolio change made for other reasons would also switch the feature off.

PPC News Feed's summary of the same page goes slightly further, stating that "Smart Bidding Exploration is not available in Search Ads 360 for Shopping or retail Performance Max campaigns." The Google page does not say that. It limits portfolio strategies built in Search Ads 360 to Search campaigns, as it does for portfolios in Google Ads, but it does not address campaign-level bid strategies managed through Search Ads 360. The two readings differ for agencies that manage retail campaigns through Google's enterprise platform.

PPC News Feed also describes the dual Search and Shopping coverage as applying to Shopping campaigns with a Merchant Center feed. On the Google page, the single toggle covering both Search and Shopping traffic is described for Performance Max campaigns with a feed.

AI Max compatibility

The page addresses one interaction with Google's query expansion tools. "Smart Bidding Exploration is fully compatible with Search and Shopping campaigns running AI Max," according to Google. Its example: "For Shopping campaigns, AI Max expands the pool of search queries your product offers are eligible for by unlocking text ads, and Smart Bidding Exploration then bids more dynamically on those queries using your flexible ROAS targets to drive incremental conversions."

The two features are designed to stack. AI Max widens the pond and Smart Bidding Exploration bids more freely within it. Google brought AI Max to Shopping campaigns at the end of April, adding the ability to show text ads instead of Shopping ads where the system judges them more relevant. Combining the two puts both the query set and the bid level under Google's control, with the advertiser's input reduced to a target and a tolerance.

The help page does not mention Performance Max in its AI Max section. Nor does it address how exploration interacts with other bidding inputs, such as seasonality adjustments or promotion mode, on retail campaigns.

A companion page

The page links to a second new document, "Compare Smart Bidding Exploration to other features". That comparison page sets exploration against a manual change to the Target ROAS figure. According to Google, exploration raises bids selectively on particular traffic segments, while a manual target cut applies uniformly to all eligible traffic. Google's broader overview of the feature, which predates the retail expansion, states that its own internal data showed Search campaigns using exploration with an allowable 10% lower ROAS averaged 27% more unique converting users and 19% more conversions. Neither new page publishes figures for Shopping or Performance Max.

How the feature got here

Smart Bidding Exploration has taken more than two years to reach retail campaigns. PPC News Feed traces it to late September 2024, when it first appeared under the name Bidding Exploration. Google announced it at Google Marketing Live in May 2025, and it went live for Target ROAS Search campaigns in July 2025, available at campaign or portfolio level. In November 2025, Google Ads Editor 2.11 added an opt-in for the feature on Search campaigns.

The retail expansion was announced well before the documentation arrived. On May 7, 2026, Google said it would extend Smart Bidding Exploration to Performance Max campaigns with product feeds and to standard Shopping campaigns, pairing the plan with the 27% unique converting users figure for Search. On June 15, alongside promotion mode and a change to how Target CPA and Target ROAS behave for budget-limited campaigns, Google made exploration globally available for Performance Max without a feed and opened a beta for feed-based Performance Max and Shopping. That announcement cited an average 18% increase in unique search query categories with conversions and a 19% increase in conversions, drawn from internal data covering March 11 to April 11, 2025.

The status shifted twice in October. In the Ads Decoded podcast episode of October 15, Google's Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin said exploration was "rolling out" to Performance Max with product feeds and "coming to" Shopping. A day later, in the Ads Decoded newsletter, she wrote that it was "now fully launched for PMax retail (with a product feed) and Shopping campaigns" and "requires uncapped budgets to function properly." The help page reported by PPC News Feed on October 22 sets out the operating rules for that launch, including the 5% to 30% range and the portfolio restriction.

Why it matters for retail advertisers

For ecommerce advertisers, Smart Bidding has long been a trade between control and volume, and ROAS targets are the main lever left to them. Smart Bidding Exploration formalizes a way of loosening that lever without changing the number itself. Google's comparison page presents it as a more targeted alternative to cutting the target outright, since it raises bids on selected queries rather than across the board.

Whether that distinction holds up in Shopping and Performance Max is not something the documents can show. Google has published performance figures only for Search, and those are averages from its own data. The retail documentation offers an expectation band rather than results: within about 15% of an already-lowered target, over one to two conversion cycles. With a 30% tolerance, a PPC Land calculation shows that band would allow a 200% target campaign to return about 119% and still be within the expected range.

The budget dependency adds a second layer. Google says exploration needs campaigns that are not limited by budget, and that it may pause when a cap is hit. The August 17 change to bidding behavior, which prompted complaints from practitioners that budget-limited campaigns would see costs rise, already pushed retail advertisers to reconsider how tightly they set targets against budgets. Exploration asks for both a looser target and a looser budget at the same time, heading into the holiday trading period.

The portfolio restriction may prove the most practical constraint. Retail accounts that rely on shared strategies across many Shopping campaigns cannot use exploration on those campaigns without restructuring their bidding, and the help page offers no date for when that might change.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google Ads, and advertisers running Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns on Target ROAS bidding. PPC News Feed first reported the help page, crediting Hana Kobzová.

What: A Google Ads help page explains how Smart Bidding Exploration works on Performance Max and Shopping as well as Search. Advertisers can accept a ROAS between 5% and 30% below target so the system can bid higher on queries campaigns already qualify for. Google says results should land within about 15% of the lowered target over one to two conversion cycles. Portfolio bid strategies, in Google Ads and Search Ads 360, are supported only for Search, and moving a retail campaign into one switches exploration off.

When: PPC News Feed reported the page on October 22, 2026. The Google page itself is undated. It follows Ginny Marvin's October 16 statement that the retail launch was complete.

Where: Google Ads globally, with the help page published in the Google Ads Help Center. Performance Max campaigns without a Merchant Center feed get exploration on Search traffic only.

Why: Google presents the feature as a way to win conversions that strict ROAS targets were missing, without widening targeting. For retailers, it means trading a lower return for possible extra volume, with no published retail results, a dependence on uncapped budgets and a restructuring cost for accounts that use portfolio strategies.