Your Exact Match Keywords Are Now Serving in AI Mode, and the Search Terms Report Will Not Tell You
The short version
Around September 3, 2026, Google began serving text ads from standard Search campaigns using exact and phrase match keywords inside AI Mode. Google's Ads Liaison calls it "a small experiment that recently kicked off," and Google has published no scope, no country list, no end date and no performance data, so nobody outside Google knows how large it is. Until this, entry to AI Mode required AI Max for Search, Performance Max, or broad match with Smart Bidding. There is no opt-in, no opt-out, and no report segment that isolates AI Mode, and Google's own documentation says that for these searches the term shown in your report is "the best approximation of the user's intent" rather than what was typed. The control campaign did not get worse. It stopped being a control.
What Google announced
Google announced nothing. The change was found in the account. On September 3, 2026, Anthony Higman of AdSquire reported on LinkedIn that standard Search campaigns running only exact and phrase match keywords were serving inside AI Mode, and said he had confirmed it across multiple campaigns and tests. Search Engine Roundtable reported it on September 4, followed by PPC Land, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch and PPC News Feed, which labelled it unannounced.
Asked about it, Google's Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin said on September 4 that it is "a small experiment that recently kicked off," limited to queries with "explicit and direct user intent," a phrase Google has not defined. She also said AI Max for Search and Performance Max remain the products built for complex conversational intent and keep exclusive access to the newest formats, including Highlighted Answers. Higman disputes the word small.
As of this writing, Google's help documentation still describes the old rule. The page About ads and AI Overviews states that Google "requires AI-powered targeting solutions like broad match on Search or the keywordless targeting technology available through AI Max for Search campaigns, Performance Max campaigns, Shopping campaigns, or Dynamic Search Ads" to match ads into AI-powered experiences. The same page answers two questions plainly: "Can I opt out of serving ads in AI Overviews? No," and "Google Ads currently doesn't offer segmented reporting when ads show within Search AI Overviews." No equivalent page exists yet for AI Mode.
What it actually means
Start by conceding what a Google product manager would correctly say: exact match has not meant a literal string match for years. Close variants ended that, and same-meaning close variants ended it again. Anyone writing in 2026 that exact match used to guarantee the exact query has the history wrong, and this brief is not going to make that claim.
What survives the concession is narrower and harder to argue with. A close variant is still a mapping between a query a real person typed and your keyword. The query existed, and it appears in your search terms report as itself. What arrived in September is a different kind of object in the same row. Google's page on ad group prioritization carries a section on "advanced search experiences" that reads, in full: "In some cases, a user's search may involve more complex search journeys, for example, searches on Lens, AI Mode, AI Overviews, or auto-complete searches. In these instances, the search term shown in your reporting represents the best approximation of the user's intent. Because these searches are not considered technically identical to a keyword, keywords may not automatically be prioritized."
Read that twice, because it contains two separate mechanics. First, the search term you see for an AI Mode impression is a synthesized string, not a typed one. Second, because the search is "not considered technically identical to a keyword," your exact match keyword loses the priority it would normally hold. Google's own prioritization table puts an identical exact match keyword at priority one, above every phrase, broad and Performance Max option in the account. On AI Mode, that rank does not apply; AI-based ad group prioritization picks instead. So the keyword you chose for precision is, on this surface, neither matched literally nor prioritized as if it were.
The read is not that exact match stopped being exact. The read is that the last two match types still insulated from inferred search terms stopped being insulated, and nothing in the account signals it. Negative keywords work against strings users typed. They are structurally weaker against strings a model inferred, which is what practitioners have been saying since May about the surfaces where this already applied. September extended that population into the match types people specifically chose in order to avoid it.
Keep two surfaces apart, because the coverage does not. AI Mode is not AI Overviews. Google's documentation has said for some time that text ads from existing Search campaigns are eligible to show within AI Overviews in twelve countries, so exact match campaigns have been reaching one AI surface already. There is a documented case of a campaign set to exact-match-only with AI Max off that could not spend its budget, because a large share of its exact-match-labelled conversions had been serving inside AI Overviews, and impression share stayed near 90% while it happened. If exact match now reaches AI Mode as well, the composition of that hidden traffic changes again, in the same month.
Note what did not expand. Reach did. Format access did not: Highlighted Answers and the newer AI Mode formats remain exclusive to AI Max and Performance Max. This is the first crack in the AI Max and PMax eligibility monopoly on AI surfaces, and it landed two days after the September 1 auto-upgrade began. Whether that is a coincidence is not knowable from outside.
Four changes, one reporting surface, one month
This would be a footnote in a quiet month. September is not a quiet month. Four changes land on the same Search reporting surface and the reports cannot separate them:
- The AI Max auto-upgrade of campaign-level broad match and automatically created assets, rolling all month, expected to conclude by September 30. Mandatory.
- This AI Mode eligibility change. No opt-in, no opt-out, scope unpublished.
- Language targeting removal for Search and AI Max for Search in late September, with Performance Max newly in scope on Google Search. Mandatory.
- The August 17 change that makes budget-limited campaigns deliver to the target you typed rather than the better number you were getting, on a gradual rollout with no change-history entry.
A September variance in a Search account now has at least four plausible in-platform causes. If your exact-and-phrase-only campaign is no longer a control, you have lost the one instrument that could have separated any of them.
The control campaign did not get worse. It stopped being a control.
Signal or noise: high if you run restrictive match types as a control, low if you never had the insulation
Rate this on what your campaigns are for, not on what they spend. If you keep an exact-and-phrase-only campaign deliberately, as the clean read you point at when someone asks whether the automation is helping, this is high signal and it is time-sensitive, because the month you most need that campaign clean is the month it stopped being clean. If every campaign you run already has AI Max, broad match or Performance Max in it, this is low signal: the insulation it removes is insulation you gave up long ago, and you can close this tab after the short version. Google's "small experiment" framing is real and should temper the urgency; it should not change the logic, because step one below tells you whether you are in it at all.
The Monday-morning playbook
- List the campaigns you currently treat as the clean read. The exact-and-phrase-only campaigns with AI Max off that you cite when somebody asks whether automation is helping. This list is the subject of everything below. If it is empty, you are done, and that is the correct outcome for a lot of accounts.
- Run the composition-drift test. For those campaigns, compare the two weeks before September 3 against the two weeks after on three numbers: the count of distinct search terms, the share of impressions on terms with zero conversions, and average CPC. You are not looking for a performance change. You are looking for composition drift, which is the fingerprint of a new surface entering the row.
- If nothing moved, write one line in your notes and close the tab. You are probably not in the test. Re-run the check at the end of September, because the scope was never published and can change without notice.
- If composition did drift, demote those campaigns in writing. Say plainly, in whatever document your team treats as the record, that these campaigns are no longer a clean control as of September 2026. That sentence is the deliverable.
- Write the September caveat before the numbers come in. For any account whose September will be reviewed by a client or a boss, note today that the month contains the AI Max migration, this AI Mode change and language targeting removal. A note written in advance is evidence. The same note written on October 3 is an excuse. The Merchant Center restatement two weeks ago made the same point from the other direction: the before has to exist before the after.
- Stop treating exact-match search terms as literal where a term drives a decision. Before adding a negative or building a new ad group off a search term, confirm it against a second source: landing page analytics, the CRM, a call recording. Do not assume the string was typed.
- Do not attribute September drift to AI Max by default. With four concurrent causes, the honest answer to "what happened" is often "these four things happened and the reports cannot separate them." Saying that is more useful than picking one.
- Calendar a check for September 30. Watch the AI Overviews help page and the AI Max documentation for a wording change. The documentation still carries the old rule, and a doc update is the signal that the experiment graduated.
The bottom line
Nothing in your account changed and there is nothing to change back. What changed is the evidentiary value of the one campaign type you were keeping clean, in the month when you most needed it clean. Google may end this experiment, expand it, or document it. Until it does one of those, the only honest position is that a restrictive match type no longer keeps a Search campaign off AI surfaces, and the reports will not tell you when it crossed over. The strategy read on why match logic is becoming something the bidder decides rather than something the advertiser inspects is at Uncommon Move: The Sealed Auction. This brief is the mechanics.
Frequently asked
Can exact match keywords serve in AI Mode?
Yes, as of early September 2026. Google's Ads Liaison confirmed on September 4, 2026 that standard Search campaigns using exact and phrase match keywords can now serve text ads in AI Mode as part of what Google calls a small experiment, limited to queries with explicit and direct user intent. Before this, AI Mode placements required AI Max for Search, Performance Max, or broad match with Smart Bidding. Google has not published the scope, the countries, or an end date, and its help documentation still describes the old rule.
How do I see AI Mode performance in Google Ads?
You cannot. Google Ads does not offer a report segment, filter, or column that isolates ads served in AI Mode, and Google's help documentation states that segmented reporting is not currently available for AI-powered search experiences. AI Mode impressions and clicks are folded into the normal keyword and search terms rows, and for these searches Google says the search term shown is the best approximation of the user's intent rather than what was typed.
Can I opt out of serving ads in AI Mode?
No. There is no campaign, ad group, or account setting that excludes AI Mode, and Google's help documentation states that advertisers cannot opt out of serving in AI Overviews either. The only historical way to stay out of AI Mode was to run exact or phrase match keywords without AI Max, and the September 2026 experiment removed that insulation. Restricting match types no longer keeps a Search campaign off the surface.
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