Performance Max- Brand searches make Performance Max look better than it is.
- Check the search terms report, your brand Search campaign and the channel report.
- Apply a brand exclusion list, keep a small brand campaign, and reset targets on non-brand results.
Performance Max often looks like the best campaign in the account. The ROAS is high, the cost per sale is low, and it seems to find customers nobody else can. Sometimes that is true. Often a large part of those sales are people who were already searching for your brand name and would have bought anyway.
That matters because a sale from someone typing your brand is cheap and almost guaranteed. If Performance Max takes credit for those sales, the campaign looks better than it is, and you never find out what a new customer really costs.
How to check how much brand traffic Performance Max gets
Google has added a lot more visibility to Performance Max over the last two years. You no longer have to guess.
1. Look at the search terms
Open the Performance Max campaign and check its search terms report and search term insights. Look for your brand name, its misspellings and your product names that include the brand. If those terms sit at the top by conversions, a big share of the campaign's results is brand demand.
Google Ads2. Compare with your brand Search campaign
If you run a separate brand Search campaign, look at what happened to it when Performance Max launched. Fewer impressions or lower impression share on brand terms, at the same time as Performance Max conversions jumped, is a strong sign the two campaigns are competing for the same searches.
3. Check the channel report
The channel performance report shows where Performance Max spends: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display and the rest. Brand traffic usually shows up in Search and Shopping. A campaign that is mostly Search with very high ROAS deserves a closer look at the search terms behind it.
A pattern we see often: in one professional haircare account, brand was close to half of all spend. The account rose and fell with brand demand. Building non-brand Search properly, and keeping it apart from brand, showed what new customers really cost. Non-brand ended up returning slightly more than brand: 12.16x against 11.82x.
What to do about it
Use brand exclusions
Performance Max lets you add brand exclusions, which stop the campaign from serving on searches for the brands you list. Create a brand list with your own brand name and apply it to the campaign. Your brand Search campaign then handles brand searches, where you control the bids, the ads and the budget.
Add negative keywords at campaign level
Since 2025 you can add negative keywords directly to a Performance Max campaign. Use them for brand misspellings or product names that brand exclusions miss, and for search terms that clearly will not buy.
Keep a brand Search campaign
Brand searches are the cheapest clicks you will ever buy, and competitors can bid on your name. A small brand Search campaign protects that traffic at a low cost and keeps it visible as its own number in reports.
Read Performance Max on non-brand results
Once brand is excluded, expect the reported ROAS of Performance Max to drop. That is not the campaign getting worse. It is the real number appearing. Set targets for the campaign on that real number, not on the old blended one.
When you should not exclude brand
There are cases where letting Performance Max serve on brand is fine. If you have no brand Search campaign and no plans to run one, or if the business is so new that hardly anyone searches for the brand yet, exclusions may make little difference. The point is to make it a decision, not a default you never looked at.
We had the opposite case too: a fabric and textiles retailer with a standing instruction not to bid on its brand at all. There, brand negatives and Performance Max brand exclusions made sure the account stopped paying for searches the client did not want to pay for.
A quick checklist
- Pull the Performance Max search terms and look for your brand.
- Check what happened to brand Search when Performance Max started.
- Look at the channel report for where the spend goes.
- Apply a brand exclusion list and add campaign-level negatives for misspellings.
- Keep or launch a small brand Search campaign.
- Reset your Performance Max targets on non-brand results.
If you want to know how much of your Performance Max is really brand, we can check it in an audit. We read the account with read-only access and tell you in writing what we would change first.
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