A version of this article was previously published by Forbes.
AI is giving Google Search superpowers, allowing it to go from helpfully responding to questions to intelligently anticipating intent. AI can help your brand unlock significant new business opportunities as consumers use Search’s growing powers to ask, learn, discover, and buy more things than ever.
This deeper understanding is changing how customers discover and connect with information and products online. In this fast-paced world of innovation, how can your marketing take advantage of these innovations and deliver new results for your business?
Here are five ways AI is helping Google Search work harder for your brand, from the very first moment of consumer discovery all the way to when they decide to buy.
1. Show up in new moments of discovery
Lens with AI-powered Search lets users search from a photo, add questions, and get AI Overviews with key information and links to learn more.
Google Search is rapidly evolving with AI, opening up exciting new ways people can discover products and information. Tools like Google Lens and Circle to Search allow visual searches using images and video, a fast-growing trend with over 100 billion visual searches this year alone.1 Even better, 1 in 5 Lens searches have commercial intent.2 And with AI Overviews, people are searching more, are more satisfied with their results, and visit a greater diversity of websites, leading to higher-quality clicks for your brand.
Rethink search: Prepare for AI-powered search by embracing Google’s Performance Max and AI Max for Search campaigns. Focus on optimizing visuals and tags for shopping ads and supplying high-quality assets. Leverage your first-party data to train Google’s AI, ensuring your ads intelligently connect with conversational and multi-modal queries across all Google surfaces.
2. Anticipate and meet users’ intent
New search inputs — like images, voice, and follow-up questions — provide incredibly rich signals about what users are truly looking for. AI excels at interpreting these diverse inputs, translating subtle cues into clear user intent. This capability allows platforms to seamlessly connect individuals with the most relevant brands, businesses, and products.
Rethink reach: With new ways of searching and improved ability to identify intent, how can your marketing keep up? With AI Max, your existing search campaigns get an automatic upgrade. The search term matching capability allows Google AI to learn from your legacy keywords and brand assets (landing pages) to expand your reach and ensure you’re showing up in more high-performing results.
3. Customize creative at speed and scale
In the new era of Search, responses are increasingly powered by AI. Within AI Overviews for example, our technology queries multiple sources to offer users a comprehensive understanding of their desired topic. Frequently, the most helpful answer is complemented by an advertisement. To ensure your ads are most relevant to these enhanced experiences, your creative assets must be able to adapt dynamically.
Rethink creative development: AI Max’s features, including text customization and final URL expansion, dynamically generate highly relevant ad copy and direct users to the most appropriate landing pages, driving enhanced performance and delivering tailored messages at scale with reduced manual effort.
4. Expand your universe of conversions
AI is allowing sophisticated bidding algorithms to expand reach beyond common queries, uncovering a wider spectrum of valuable customer leads. This intelligence enables flexible performance targets, empowering systems to bid effectively on less obvious yet highly profitable search terms. The result is a significant increase in conversion diversity and volume, maximizing conversions and unlocking new growth avenues.
Rethink growth: Reach beyond obvious queries to proactively explore high-performing searches across unique categories. Smart Bidding Exploration is one of the biggest updates to our bidding algorithms in over a decade. It builds on your AI Max for Search campaigns by allowing you to set flexible ROAS target tolerance.
5. Optimize performance with transparency and controls
As AI-powered search advertising capabilities — including automated search terms, bidding, and creative generation — continue to advance, granular reporting becomes paramount. Detailed insights are crucial for marketers to effectively partner with AI, leveraging its intelligence to refine strategies, discover emerging opportunities, and propel significant business growth.
Rethink ROI: To help you evaluate your AI-powered optimizations on Google Search, we’ve updated our Search Terms report to include a new match type for AI-created search terms, and we detail their origins. Additionally, a new view combines search terms, headlines, and URLs into one comprehensive view of customer ad journeys. Updates to additional reports increase visibility into performance of AI-generated keywords, ad destinations, and AI-created assets.
The integration of AI into Google Search isn’t merely an incremental update; it’s a profound transformation, redefining the entire search landscape. For marketing leaders, the key takeaway is clear: As search formats and surfaces continue to evolve, so too must the strategies you employ. This shift empowers brands to connect with consumers in richer, more intuitive ways, moving beyond simple keyword matching to anticipating user intent and delivering highly personalized experiences at scale.
By embracing AI’s capabilities and actively leveraging AI Max for Search — a one-click enhancement that optimizes across all five critical areas of discovery, user intent, creative, conversions, and performance controls — advertisers can unlock new avenues for discovery, optimize creative for impact, and expand conversion opportunities, ultimately driving more meaningful engagement and demonstrable growth.
