Category: Google Ads
If you run your own Google Ads account, there’s a good chance Google has suggested you try Performance Max. It pops up in recommendations, it’s offered when you create a new campaign, and Google’s own advice tends to present it as the modern way to advertise.
So should a small business in Salisbury use it? The honest answer is: sometimes, but not usually as the first thing you try, and never without keeping a close eye on it.
What Performance Max actually is
A normal Search campaign shows text adverts on Google when people search for the keywords you’ve chosen. You decide the keywords, write the adverts and control quite a lot about where and when they appear.
Performance Max works differently. You give Google your goals, your budget, a set of headlines, descriptions, images and videos, and some hints about your customers. Google then decides where to show your adverts across almost everything it owns: search results, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, the Display network of other websites, and the Discover feed on phones. It mixes and matches your text and images automatically and moves your budget towards whatever it thinks is working.
In short, you hand over most of the decisions to Google’s automation in return for reach across far more places than a Search campaign can cover.
Why Google likes it
From Google’s point of view, Performance Max makes a lot of sense. It lets Google use all of its advertising space, it relies heavily on automation Google has invested a lot in, and it typically spends your full budget.
It’s worth remembering, as we said in our post on getting the most out of your PPC, that Google earns from every click. That doesn’t mean Performance Max is a bad product. It just means Google’s enthusiasm for it isn’t neutral advice.
What has changed
When Performance Max first arrived, the biggest complaint from advertisers was that it was a black box. You put money in and got results out, but you had very little idea where your adverts were showing, what searches they were showing for, or how to stop them appearing where you didn’t want them.
That has improved a lot. Over 2025 Google added the ability to use negative keywords in Performance Max campaigns, so you can stop your adverts showing for searches you know are useless. It made search terms reporting available, so you can see what people searched for. And it added channel reporting, so you can see how much of your budget is going on search compared with YouTube, Display and the rest.
Those changes make Performance Max much easier to manage than it used to be. But they don’t change how it fundamentally works. Google is still making most of the decisions.
Why it can struggle for small local businesses
Performance Max’s automation learns from your conversions, the calls, enquiries and sales you’ve told Google to count. The more conversions it has to learn from, the better it gets. A business getting hundreds of online sales a month gives it plenty to work with.
A local tradesperson getting ten or fifteen enquiries a month gives it very little. With so few signals, the automation can take a long time to work out what a good customer looks like, and in the meantime it may spend a lot of your budget on placements that were never going to produce work, such as cheap clicks from websites and apps on the Display network.
There’s also the question of tracking. If your conversion tracking isn’t set up properly, or it’s counting things that aren’t real enquiries, Performance Max will happily optimise towards the wrong thing. It’s only as good as the information you give it.
And for a business that serves a small area, much of the value is in search. Someone searching “emergency plumber Salisbury” is far more likely to call than someone who scrolled past an image advert on a news website. A well-run Search campaign puts your money exactly where that intent is.
When Performance Max can make sense
It isn’t all bad news. Performance Max can work well for local businesses in the right circumstances.
If you sell products online and have a product feed set up, it can be very effective. If you already have a Search campaign that’s working well and want to reach more people, it can be a useful addition. If you have good images and videos and a business that people choose visually, such as a wedding venue, a restaurant or a home improvement company, the extra placements on YouTube and Maps can genuinely help. And if you have accurate conversion tracking with a reasonable number of conversions each month, the automation has something to work with.
If you try it, keep control
If you decide to give Performance Max a go, a few precautions make a big difference.
Start with a separate budget, so it can’t take money away from Search campaigns you know are working. Make sure your conversion tracking is accurate first. Set your location targeting carefully so you’re only reaching the area you serve. Add negative keywords for the searches you don’t want, and exclude your own business name if you’d rather keep brand searches in a separate campaign. And check the search terms and channel reports regularly, especially in the first few weeks.
Then judge it on real results. Not on clicks or impressions, but on calls and enquiries, and on whether those enquiries turn into work.
Our view
For most small local service businesses starting out with Google Ads, a well-built Search campaign is still the better place to begin. It’s easier to understand, easier to control, and it puts your budget in front of people actively looking for what you do.
Performance Max is a tool worth knowing about, and for some businesses it will earn its place. But it’s an addition to a solid account, not a shortcut to one.
If you’d like an honest view on whether Performance Max would suit your business, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital manage pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area. Give us a call on 01722 320 500.