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Performance Max vs Search for Ecommerce: Which Should You Run?

What Performance Max and Search campaigns each do for an online store, where each one wins, and how to run them together without them fighting.

By Nathan Synoground, founder of TheCMO

Most ecommerce brands should run both Performance Max and Search, each with a clear job. Performance Max is Google’s automated campaign that shows your products across Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover and Search from one budget. It is strong at finding buyers for your catalog. Search campaigns show text ads on the searches you choose. They give you control over the queries that matter most. The mistake is running either one without deciding what it is for.

Here is how each works, where each wins, and how to set them up so they help each other.

What Performance Max does

Performance Max takes your product feed, your images, videos and text, your conversion goals and a budget. Google then decides where to show ads, to whom, and at what bid. For a store, most of the spend usually goes to Shopping placements, the product listings with an image and price.

Where it wins:

• Reach across a big catalog. It can find buyers for many products at once without you building a campaign for each.
• Shopping coverage. For most stores, Shopping listings are where a lot of sales start. Performance Max covers them well.
• Speed to launch. A store with a good feed can get a working campaign quickly.

Where it struggles:

• Less visibility. You see less about which searches and placements spent your money. Google has added more reporting over time, but it is still less than Search.
• It takes the easy wins. Left alone, it often spends heavily on branded searches and past visitors, who were likely to buy anyway. That makes results look better than the new growth it is finding.
• It follows the feed. If your feed is weak, Performance Max has little to work with.

What Search does

Search campaigns show text ads when people search terms you choose. You decide the keywords, the ads and the landing pages.

Where it wins:

• Control. You see every search term, choose which to target and exclude the rest.
• High-intent queries. For specific searches, such as a product type plus a feature, Search lets you write ads that match exactly what the shopper typed.
• Brand protection. A separate brand Search campaign lets you control what shows when people search your name, and keep that spend apart from everything else.

Where it struggles:

• No product images. Text ads compete with Shopping listings that show a picture and price.
• More work. Keywords, negatives and ad copy need regular attention.
• Narrower reach. It only shows where you tell it to.

Running both without a fight

Performance Max and Search can bid on the same searches. Google has rules about which one wins, and they have changed over time. The practical answer is to give each campaign a clear role so overlap matters less.

A setup that works for many stores:

1. Brand Search. A Search campaign on your brand name, with its own budget. Report it separately.
2. Non-brand Search. Search campaigns for your most valuable product and problem searches, where control and tailored ads pay off.
3. Performance Max for the catalog. Split by product group, using custom labels in the feed for margin, bestsellers or seasonal lines. Brand terms excluded where Google allows it, so it has to find new demand.
4. Standard Shopping, sometimes. Some stores keep a standard Shopping campaign for tighter control of a product group, or for testing. It is less common than it was, but still useful in some accounts.

How to decide what gets budget

Start from margins, not from campaign type. Work out roughly what you can afford to pay for a sale on each product group. Then:

• Put more budget behind product groups with healthy margin and proven demand.
• Keep Search on the queries where you need control or tailored copy.
• Watch how much Performance Max spend goes to branded searches and returning visitors. Ask your agency to show you.
• Compare results by product group, not just by campaign.

Our guide on how to read a Google Ads report explains which numbers to trust when you compare them.

Signs your setup needs work

• One Performance Max campaign holds the whole catalog, with no product groups.
• Brand and non-brand results are mixed together.
• Nobody can tell you what Performance Max spent on brand searches.
• Search campaigns have not had negatives added in weeks.
• The feed has many disapproved or limited products.

If several of these sound familiar, see signs your Google Ads agency is wasting money.

The feed decides more than the campaign type

Whichever campaign you run, Shopping placements read your product feed. Titles, product types, images, prices and custom labels decide where your products can show and how Google groups them. A strong feed makes Performance Max better and Shopping cheaper. A weak one holds back both. That is why we treat the feed as part of the campaign. Read more on our Google Ads for ecommerce page.

How we approach it

Nathan Synoground has managed Google Ads for 12 ecommerce brands, with $4.0M in spend and $24.0M in tracked revenue. We do not pick a campaign type first. We look at the feed, margins and tracking, then give each campaign a job.

If you want to know how your current setup should change, request a free Google Ads audit. Or go back to our ranking of the best Google Ads agencies to compare options.