By Lee Moran, Founder of Veritas Digital
On 14th August 2026, Google confirmed that the campaign level language targeting setting will be removed from Search and Performance Max campaigns from September 2026. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Product Liaison, announced it on LinkedIn with an immediate statement: it sounds like a big shift, but it really isn’t.
It is partly fair in my personal opinion. The setting does less than most advertisers believe, and we will explain exactly what it did and did not do below.
But the change isn’t nothing at all though. We have run the test this change forces on everyone at the start of the year, deliberately, and it led to a declining ROAS and showing on a lot of irrelevant search terms. It also lands in the same four weeks as the automatic conversion of broad match and automatically created assets campaigns to AI Max, which means two changes to query matching in one month with no easy way to separate them afterwards. Not a good way to measure change and leads to the question of why Google is forcing through many changes at once and not one by one so users can test the impact of each feature change.
What is changing?
Three things, not all as significant as each other:
- The campaign level language setting is removed from Search campaigns and from AI Max for Search. Google will instead determine which ads to serve based on the language of your ad creative and landing page, the language of the search term, and the languages it believes the user knows (likely using past search history and browser settings).
- For Performance Max, the setting is removed for Google Search inventory only. Advertiser selected language settings continue to guide delivery across YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail, which means your images and videos don’t show to users who don’t understand the language at all. Shopping ads inside Performance Max are not governed by language settings and never were.
- A new behaviour switches on (which is where we hope makes the difference). Where a search term carries a clear language, Google will prioritise serving the ad and landing page that match that language. This check exists in the system today but is currently not yet active.
The Performance Max element is a change of scope though. Google’s documentation a year ago said non Search functionality would not change. Performance Max is a non Search campaign type, and it is now mentioned but it does serve on Search, so it feels like a bit of a get around by Google (but to some extent understandable).
The misconception worth clearing up first
The most common misreading is that leaving a language unselected excludes it all together. It doesn’t work like this and never has. Google addressed this directly: language exclusions are already not supported, and that is not changing.
What the setting did up until now was check whether the language you configured matched one of the languages Google believed that user could read. It was a check on the user, not a filter on the query.
The setting never gave you exclusions, and cross language matching has always been permitted where Google judges a user capable of reading your ad and landing page. But the setting was still narrowing the pool of users your campaign could reach, and Google’s own graphic shows the campaign language check is marked active today and inactive from September.
Which is why the redundancy argument does not hold. The question is not whether the setting was a hard exclusion, because it never was. The question is whether the automatic system does the same job on its own once it’s introduced.
How language targeting works, before and after September 2026
| Where ads serve | Now | From September 2026 |
| Search (and AI Max for Search) | Campaign language setting applies | Setting removed. Matching driven by ad and landing page language, search term language and the user’s languages |
| Performance Max – Google Search | Campaign language setting applies | Setting removed/ignored. Behaves the same way as Search |
| Performance Max – Display, Discover, Gmail | Campaign language setting applies | No change. Setting still applies |
| Performance Max – YouTube and video | Campaign language setting applies | No change. Setting still applies |
| Performance Max – Shopping | Not governed by language settings | No change. Still not governed by language settings |
Why we are not as relaxed about this as Google is
Because we have measured what happens when the constraint comes off earlier this year, and it cost us with a lower ROAS.
On a travel client running Google Ads across more than 35 markets, we investigated our Spanish language campaigns, using Spanish keywords, Spanish ad copy, Spanish landing pages, campaign language set to all languages and AI Max running alongside. The account still matched a meaningful volume of search terms in other languages to those Spanish ads.
Those clicks did not convert. Someone searches in one language, clicks an ad written in another, arrives on a Spanish landing page and leaves. We paid for the click either way. The Spanish queries kept producing conversions as they always had, while the spend leaking out to other language search terms returned nothing at all, leading to a lower ROAS.
When we moved them back to Spanish only targeting, ROAS recovered. Same creative, same landing pages, same market, the only change is the setting Google is about to remove.
So, the campaign language setting is not decorative, and it is not redundant. It’s doing measurable filtering work that the automatic comprehension check may not replicate on its own, and we have the before and after on one series of accounts to show it. From September, every Search campaign behaves like all languages version of itself, which is precisely the configuration we measured a ROAS drop on.
Two caveats in Google’s favour, both worth stating. Our test ran earlier this year, and AI Max has had a great deal of development since, so it is entirely possible the matching has improved. And the second half of the September announcement targets this exact failure: where a query carries a clear language, the matching ad and landing page should now be prioritised. In principle that is a tightening and hopefully users won’t see the same as we did.
Neither caveat resolves the problem. When we hit this, we had a lever to pull and we pulled it. From September that lever does not exist, and the serving rule replacing it is one nobody has been able to run a campaign through yet and so results will be interesting.
And the calendar makes it harder to diagnose
September is carrying a considerable load for anyone running Search. On the 1st September, campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign level broad match setting convert automatically to AI Max for Search, confirmed by an email on 5th August with no accompanying blog post. For the broad match cohort that is close to a relabelling. For the automatically created assets cohort it is not: those campaigns opted into automated creative generation and now inherit automated query expansion as well on top.
There is a number attached to that risk though. Lunio published a retail study on the 12th August, covering more than 414 million clicks between October 2025 and June 2026, which found Search campaigns running AI Max exposed to 72% more invalid traffic than campaigns without it. Invalid traffic on AI Max campaigns climbed from 2.46% to 5.28% over that period, while standard search campaigns in the same accounts eased from 3.72% to 3.07%. Read it with caution, since Lunio sells invalid traffic detection and the study is retail specific, but it is the best independent data available on AI Max query expansion and should be noted.
In a few weeks, Google expands automated query matching across a large cohort of accounts and removes a targeting setting from Search and Performance Max. Any performance movement in September will have at least two plausible platform causes, and we will have lost a diagnostic variable PPC teams have relied on for years.
That is the second cost, on top of the first. Not only does the constraint come off, but you also lose the ability to prove that is what caused the change in performance.
What this means if you advertise in more than one language
Single language structures, separate English and Spanish campaigns being the standard example, continue to function. No restructuring is required, and Google has been very clear on that.
The exposure sits with advertisers in bilingual and multilingual markets, where users routinely have more than one language in their profile. Belgium, Switzerland and Canada all qualify. There, your ad copy and landing page language carry the weight a campaign setting used to share. Make both unambiguous: having a mixed language navigation, or English brand terms inside otherwise Spanish copy, gives the system a muddier signal than you might assume. So advertisers will need to be stricter with their translation and localisation efforts on both the ad copy and the landing page.
One point matters specifically for regulated advertisers. Google confirmed it does not translate ad creative, and that text customisation inside AI Max generates copy from your landing page and existing assets rather than rendering it into another language. For healthcare, legal and financial services clients, where compliance wording is approved per market, that assurance is now on the record.
What to do before the 1st September
None of this requires a rebuild. It requires a baseline.
- Export your search terms report now, by campaign, covering at least 90 days. After the 1st September you cannot reconstruct a clean pre change picture.
- Identify which campaigns convert to AI Max on 1st September – anything using automatically created assets or campaign level broad match. Those carry the most variance.
- Audit landing page language consistency in multilingual markets. Navigation, forms, cookie banners and confirmation page all count.
- Tell your stakeholders now that September performance will be hard to attribute, rather than explaining it in the October report.
- Move search term reviews to weekly for September and October, particularly on any campaign converting to AI Max.
- Segment your search terms by language, not just by performance. Spend flowing to queries in languages your landing pages do not serve is the specific leak to watch for from September.
Frequently asked questions
Does leaving a language unselected in the campaign settings exclude it entirely?
No, and it never has. Language exclusions are not supported in Google Ads, and that is not changing. But it did narrow the pool to users that Google believed understood that language.
Do I need to restructure my campaigns?
No. Google has confirmed single language structures continue to work as they do now. Existing language criteria can stay in place and will simply stop applying, though you may remove them for cleanliness.
Does this affect Performance Max?
Partly. The setting stops applying to Google Search inventory within Performance Max, where matching works the same way as Search. Your language settings continue to guide delivery on YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail and so the setting should still appear in Performance Max. Shopping ads within Performance Max are unaffected.
Will Google translate my ads?
No. Google has confirmed it does not translate ad creative, and that AI Max text customisation generates copy from your landing page and existing assets rather than rendering it into another language.
Should I expect more irrelevant search terms in September?
We expect an increase in irrelevant search terms. When we opened a multilingual account up to all languages, the Spanish campaigns we checked picked up a volume of other language queries that wasted budget and did not convert. ROAS fell, and recovered when we set the targeting back. From September every campaign runs in that opened state. Ensure to pull a pre September baseline search query wise and measure weekly post 1st September to measure the changes in the search terms.
The bottom line
Google is right to some extent that language targeting was doing less than advertisers assumed up until now. But since AI Max, that has changed and other language search queries have been appearing increasingly more so in the past year when using all languages on Search.
We have tested it directly at the start of the year and removing language specific targeting lowered ROAS and adding it back in increased the ROAS again. September removes language specific targeting everywhere, activates untested serving behaviour to compensate, and converts a large cohort of accounts to AI Max, inside of four weeks. That’s a lot of change in one go and will make it difficult to unpick.
The advertisers who come out of this well will not be the ones who restructured. They will be the ones who took a baseline first, tightened up on their translation and localisation of their ad copies and landing pages before the change and then measured the impact afterwards. And hopefully this won’t be a repeat of what we saw at the start of this year, but without the ability to roll back.
Get in touch with us
If you would like a second opinion on how exposed your account is ahead of September, or a review of your paid search structure before the changes land, get in touch with us – we’d be happy to help.
References
- Search Engine Land – Google Ads is removing language targeting from Search campaigns – https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-is-removing-language-targeting-from-search-campaigns-484831
- Search Engine Journal – Google Is Removing Language Targeting From Search Campaigns – https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-removing-language-targeting-from-search-campaigns/585592/
- Search Engine Roundtable – Google Ads Language Targeting Update Coming In September – https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-language-targeting-update-41867.html
- PPC Land – Google Ads drops language targeting in September, nine months past deadline – https://ppc.land/google-ads-drops-language-targeting-in-september-nine-months-past-deadline/
- PPC Land – Google Ads broad match campaigns face AI Max auto-upgrade on September 1 – https://ppc.land/google-ads-broad-match-campaigns-face-ai-max-auto-upgrade-on-september-1/
- PPC Land – Retailers on AI Max face 72% more invalid traffic, Lunio finds – https://ppc.land/retailers-on-ai-max-face-72-more-invalid-traffic-lunio-finds/
- PPC Land – Google removes language targeting from Search campaigns by 2025 (original documentation) – https://ppc.land/google-removes-language-targeting-from-search-campaigns-by-2025/
- Veritas Digital – Google Delays the DSA to AI Max Migration to February 2027 – https://veritas-digital.co.uk/blog/dsa-to-ai-max-migration-delayed/
