Exact and Phrase Match Are Now Serving in AI Mode: Are Your Queries Migrating to AI Max?

By Lee Moran, Founder of Veritas Digital

Google has quietly reversed its own decision on which match types can appear inside AI Mode. The interesting though question is what it does to reporting, and whether match type reporting is accurate anymore.

On the 4th of September 2026, Google confirmed it is running a test that lets ordinary Search campaigns built on exact and phrase match keywords serve text ads inside AI Mode. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, called it “a small experiment that recently kicked off”. She added one condition: eligibility is limited to cases where there is explicit and direct user intent, which is usually the case with exact and phrase.

On the face of it this is a small change, and it is a test with no end date, no data and no list of countries. But it undoes a rule Google had been clear about for nearly a year, and it lands in the middle of a month where legacy Search features are being pulled into AI Max by default. This reversal is worth noting, suggesting that soon all Search campaigns, regardless of the use of AI Max or not, could be fully serving in AI Mode in time.

This is the third post we’ve written with the recent changes within AI powered PPC, where part one looked at how to steer AI Max with an AI Brief and part two covered the campaign level broad match migration to AI Max. This one is about the mechanics which could be changing for regular Search campaigns as well.

What’s changing?

Before this test, there were three ways to get an ad into an AI Mode placement: AI Max, Performance Max, or broad match paired with smart bidding. If you ran a tight keyword list on exact and phrase match, you were unable to serve on AI Mode.

Marvin has explained that exact and phrase match keywords are now eligible to serve text ads in AI Mode, but only where user intent is explicit and direct. She also made the point that AI Max and Performance Max remain the products built for complex conversational intent and for newer formats such as highlighted answers.

Google has not specifically defined what “explicit and direct” means, what countries the test is running in, given an end date and has not published any performance figures just yet. So, I’d take this test as a signal about the direction of where search is going rather than something to build a plan around.

Why this is a change of direction and not a new feature

At the end of 2025, Ginny Marvin confirmed that exact match keywords were not eligible to serve inside an AI Overview at all – they could serve in the standard ad block above or below the AI Overview box, just not within it. The reason that was given was that ads in those placements are matched to both the user query and the generated answer, so only broad match or keywordless targeting from PMax or AI Max could trigger them. The same rule applied also to AI Mode.

Then in June 2026, after Google Marketing Live, Ginny Marvin mentioned that broad match campaigns were already eligible for AI Overviews and AI Mode without AI Max, and that AI Max widened eligibility by applying broad match behaviour to phrase and exact keywords while also adding keywordless matching.

So the position has moved from “your keywords cannot structurally do this” to “your keywords can do this when the query is clear enough”. That is a change in the rules and not a gradual rollout of something that been previously announced. If this test works, the decision about whether you appear on AI surfaces stops being a campaign setting you control like with AI Max or Pmax but becomes a standard de facto within all campaigns that serve on Google Search.

What I am seeing in client accounts

Nothing on this specific test yet, and I would rather say that than invent a case study out of thin air. We’ve moved every account we manage onto AI Max voluntarily, ahead of Google’s forced migration, because doing it on our own timetable gave us control over settings and timing so we can monitor the changes in advance. Force migrations in my opinion, never end well, especially if you manage a large volume of accounts.

What I have noticed since is a steady rise in the share of queries reported against AI Max as a match type, and some of those queries are short, literal, commercial searches that an exact match keyword in the same campaign would normally have picked up, but is now labelled as AI Max. That now begs the question about where the credit is now being portrayed, which will likely skew a better performance towards AI Max.

Where each keyword type can serve now

Targeting type	Standard results	Inside an AI Overview	Inside AI Mode
Exact match	Yes	No, but can serve above or below the box	Yes, inside a limited test, only where intent is explicit and direct
Phrase match	Yes	No, but can serve above or below the box	Yes, same test and same limit
Broad match with Smart Bidding	Yes	Yes	Yes
AI Max	Yes	Yes	Yes, plus newer formats such as highlighted answers
Performance Max for Search	Yes	Yes	Yes, plus newer formats such as highlighted answers

Sources for the table are listed at the end of this article. The AI Mode column reflects a live test and could change at any point based on the test results.

The reporting problem

PPC Land has documented that search terms which would have matched your existing exact and phrase keywords can end up credited to AI Max in reporting, rather than to the keyword that would have caught them anyway. Add this new test on top and the exact match row in your account is now doing four jobs at once. It covers literal matches, close variants, it can absorb expansion credited back from AI Max and now it can include impressions from a conversational surface where the user was not typing a keyword at all.

There is no AI Mode segment to split any of that out – Google’s own position in June was that AI specific reporting is still a work in progress, and nothing has shipped since to change that. So you have a keyword row that is quietly broadening while the reporting that would let you see it broadening does not yet exist.

So, if you judge a keyword by its cost per acquisition, and that row is increasingly a blend of literal intent and generated intent, you are making bid, budget and pausing decisions on an average of two different things, which gets worse the more AI Mode volume grows.

What to watch over the coming months

There is not much to switch on or off here, so the honest advice is to monitor rather than react.

• Track the share of your Search spend and conversions reported against AI Max, month on month. Write the number down now so you have a baseline, as I expect this to increase.
• Watch for short, literal, high intent queries showing up against AI Max rather than against the exact match or phrase match that usually covers them. That pattern is the early signal that these queries are shifting to AI Max.
• Compare cost per acquisition on your exact and phrase keywords over a long enough window to see drift, rather than week to week. Slow broadening does not show up in a seven-day view and likely this shift will take months.
• Keep your negative keyword lists current. They remain the most reliable control you have, and they work at account, campaign and ad group level regardless of which surface an ad serves on (but usually account level is the easiest to manage, as it’s all in one place).
• Do not restructure your account around a test. No end date, no data and no country list is not a foundation for a rebuild and will only cause you a headache down the line.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need AI Max to appear in AI Mode?

No. Broad match with Smart Bidding has been eligible for a while, and exact and phrase match are now eligible inside this limited test as well. AI Max and Performance Max widen eligibility further and unlock newer formats, but they are not the only route in.

Is this the same thing as AI Overviews?

No – AI Overviews is a generated answer box inside the normal results page and AI Mode is a separate conversational experience where a user can keep asking follow up questions. Exact and phrase match still cannot serve inside an AI Overview, only above or below it.

Can I opt out of AI Mode?

There is no setting to opt out of AI mode.

Will this test become permanent?

So far that is unknown – the direction of travel across the last two years with Google suggests expansion is more likely than withdrawal, but that is my personal observation so far.

Should I change my match types because of this?

Not on the strength of a test alone. If you were already considering consolidating towards broad match with Smart Bidding for other reasons, then this adds weight to consider a consolidation.

The bottom line

If you’ve continued with a tight list of exact and phrase match keywords, this test gives back these older structures a small win now they can surface in AI Mode.

We moved our accounts to AI Max early so we could access both AI Overviews and AI Mode as soon as possible, so it’s interesting to see that Google is already testing regular search campaigns in AI Mode also where possible AI Max won’t be as necessary to reach AI surfaces.

I’d also watch the AI Max share of your queries over the next few months – if it keeps rising while your exact match volume falls, then there’s relabelling taking place, not a change in performance. It will be important to keep a keen eye on this, especially with all the other changes and migrations that are currently taking place.

References

• Search Engine Roundtable – Google Ads Testing Serving Restrictive Match Types In AI Mode
• Search Engine Land – Google tests traditional Search campaigns in AI Mode
• PPC Land – Exact and phrase match keywords gain AI Mode ads in Google test
• Search Engine Land – Google: Exact match keywords won’t block broad match in AI Max
• Search Engine Land – Ginny Marvin clarifies AI Max, AI Search ads and what advertisers should prioritise after GML
• Search Engine Land – Google sets AI Max migration timeline for Search campaigns
• Google Ads Help – About the broad match keywords campaign setting
• Google – Ads in AI Mode