A marketer wants to use Performance Max to find untapped growth opportunities but needs to make sure traffic doesn't reach Careers pages. Which feature should they use?
Correct Answer
URL exclusions
Why is this the correct answer?
They should use URL exclusions. Performance Max and AI Max can expand to a final URL beyond the one an advertiser specified, sending users to whichever page on the site best matches their query. That is useful for discovering demand, but it also means pages that were never meant to receive ad traffic — careers, investor relations, support articles, press releases — can become landing pages. URL exclusions let the advertiser list rules for paths that must never be used, so expansion continues everywhere else while those sections stay off limits. This keeps the growth benefit without wasting budget on people searching for jobs rather than products. It is the standard companion control to final URL expansion, and the recommended setup is to enable expansion for reach and then exclude the sections of the site that have no commercial purpose.
Why are the other options wrong?
Search themes
Search themes tell the campaign which topics to pursue. They guide where to expand, but they cannot prevent traffic landing on a specific page.
Ad Strength
Ad Strength rates how complete and varied the ad assets are. It is a creative quality indicator and has no effect on which URLs are used.
Final URL expansion
Final URL expansion is the feature that causes this behaviour in the first place. Turning it off would stop the problem but also give up the untapped growth the marketer wants.
Real-world example
A recruitment-heavy manufacturer notices Performance Max sending searches for its brand name to the careers page, which converts nothing. Adding a URL exclusion for /careers keeps expansion switched on across product pages, and the wasted spend disappears within days.
Topics in this question
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