About Final URL expansion in Performance Max

Note: Final URL expansion is turned on by default for Performance Max campaigns. If you want to turn this feature off, uncheck the checkbox during campaign setup or within your campaign's settings. Turning off Final URL expansion can help prevent your campaign from using unexpected URLs.

You can turn on “Final URL expansion” in your Performance Max campaign settings to allow your campaign to replace your Final URL with a more relevant landing page from the Final URL domain, based on the user’s search intent. However, keep in mind that this can sometimes lead to ads pointing to unintended pages if not managed carefully with URL exclusions.

When running Performance Max campaigns for store goals only (like store visits, store sales, contacts, and direction clicks), Final URL expansion isn't supported.

If text customization (formerly known as automatically created assets or ACA) is turned on, Google may replace your Final URL with a more relevant landing page based on the user’s search query. It might also generate dynamic headlines, descriptions, and additional assets (like images sourced from your landing pages) to match your landing page content. To prevent unwanted auto-generated text or image assets, you should disable "Text Customization" and potentially features like "Landing page images" if available. Providing a comprehensive set of high-quality, advertiser-created assets (like images, text, video) is highly recommended, as the system prioritizes these. Changes to these settings may take 24-48 hours to fully reflect. Learn more about text customization in Performance Max campaigns.

On this page

Set up Final URL expansion in Performance Max
How to exclude URLs
Use page feeds with URL expansion
Frequently Asked Questions

Set up Final URL expansion in Performance Max

Go to Campaigns within the Campaigns menu .
Select the gear icon beside the Performance Max campaign you want to edit.
Under “Campaign settings”, select Asset optimization.
Under “Text”, select the Text Customization and Final URL checkboxes to turn on the settings.
Select Save.

How to exclude URLs

Final URL expansion can serve and receive traffic on any page that hasn’t been excluded. This means that if you have a subdirectory (like www.example.com/brand), your campaigns may be optimized to show both general and brand subdirectory pages.

Follow the instructions below to leverage URL exclusions to prevent traffic from going to specific pages you don't want customers directed to, such as non-commercial sections of your website.

In a Performance Max campaign

Go to Campaigns within the Campaigns menu .
Select the gear icon beside the Performance Max campaign you want to edit.
Under “Campaign settings”, select Asset optimization.
Select Text customization to expand the section, then select Exclude some URLs under “Final URL.”
In the “Exclude some URLs” slider panel, list the URLs that you want to exclude, then select Add.
- Note: To use rules to exclude URLs, select the Rules tab to add your custom rules. Then select Add.
Select Apply to close the slider panel, then Save in the “Optimize asset performance” section.

Use page feeds with URL expansion

You can now provide a feed of URLs for your Performance Max campaign to use. This feature complements Google’s automated understanding of what products and services advertisers should be using. Learn more about How to use page feeds in Performance Max.

If Final URL expansion is on: Providing a page feed helps to verify that we’re indexing the provided URLs, but it doesn’t restrict ads to serve only URLs from the provided feed.
If Final URL expansion is off: Your Performance Max campaign will only send users to the URLs provided in your page feed and asset groups.

Note: Advertisers that sell ads on marketplaces, have several different lines of businesses, or have multi-domain campaigns may experience mismatched headlines or descriptions with Final URL expansion turned on. If this occurs, use generic descriptions or page feed instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to improve a campaign’s performance?

Turn on the text customization settings (text assets and Final URL).

2. How to improve campaign performance without showing ads for certain terms?

Keep the text customization setting on and use account-level negative keywords.

3. How to get good campaign performance without sending traffic to certain pages?

Keep the text customization setting on and use URL exclusion rules.

4. How can I send traffic to one specific page, as that’s the only path to conversion?

Keep text customization turned on and turn off Final URL expansion. Ensure the Final URL specified in your asset group is the exact page you want users to land on. For Performance Max campaigns linked to a Google Merchant Center (GMC) feed, verify that the Final URL in the asset group aligns with the domain verified in your GMC account to avoid issues.

5. My ads are disapproved for "Destination not working" or I see errors related to landing page issues. What should I do?

Ensure your Final URL leads directly to the intended, live landing page without unexpected redirects. Verify that the page is accessible to Google's crawlers and that your website's robots.txt file isn't blocking Google AdsBot. Check for any HTTP errors (like 404 Not Found). If using redirects, ensure they are configured correctly. Sometimes, manually adding the final URL in HTTPS format to the asset group can resolve these issues. After making corrections, you may need to resubmit your ads for review or appeal the policy decision if you believe it was an error.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?