The Forced Migration Nobody Asked For

When Google announced the sunset of Smart Shopping campaigns and forced migration to Performance Max, advertisers who had spent years building sophisticated negative keyword strategies faced a significant challenge. The control you carefully cultivated through negative keyword lists was about to collide with Google's most automated campaign type. For agencies managing multiple client accounts and in-house teams protecting hard-won ROAS improvements, this migration represented more than just a technical change—it threatened to undo months or years of optimization work.

According to analysis of over 4,000 Performance Max campaigns, PMax cost share peaked at 82% in May 2024 but has since lost nearly 6% in total as advertisers rediscover Standard Shopping and Search as more controllable alternatives. This trend signals a growing awareness: automation without control creates waste, not efficiency.

The stakes are particularly high because Google's automatic migration process created entirely new campaigns without transferring historical performance data or your carefully constructed negative keyword architecture. You're not just dealing with a settings change—you're rebuilding campaign intelligence from scratch while Google's algorithm learns at your expense.

What You Built in Smart Shopping (And What Got Lost)

Smart Shopping campaigns allowed limited but meaningful control through shared negative keyword lists applied at the campaign level. While you couldn't see search term reports or control bidding, you could at least prevent your product ads from showing for queries containing terms like "free," "cheap," "DIY," "how to make," or "jobs." This created a foundational layer of traffic quality protection.

Sophisticated advertisers built multi-tiered negative keyword architectures:

• Universal negatives: Applied across all campaigns to block fundamentally irrelevant traffic
• Product category negatives: Specific to product types to prevent cross-category confusion
• Margin protection negatives: Terms indicating price sensitivity that would yield low-value customers
• Competitor brand negatives: Strategic exclusions based on competitive positioning
• Seasonal negatives: Rotated based on inventory availability and market timing

When Google migrated Smart Shopping to Performance Max, your negative keywords technically transferred—but the context that made them effective often didn't. Performance Max operates across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Your Shopping-focused negative keywords now apply only to Search and Shopping inventory within Performance Max, leaving Display, YouTube, and other channels completely unprotected from irrelevant traffic.

More critically, Google's migration process created new campaigns without historical data. Your conversion history, quality score signals, and algorithm learning that informed Smart Shopping's automation reset to zero. This learning period happens on your budget, with your negative keyword protection potentially misaligned to the new multi-channel reality.

The Performance Max Negative Keyword Reality Check

Performance Max finally introduced campaign-level negative keywords in late 2024—a feature advertisers requested since the campaign type launched in 2022. According to Google's official documentation, you can now add up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign. This sounds like comprehensive control until you understand the limitations.

Channel Coverage Limitations

Performance Max negative keywords apply exclusively to Search and Shopping inventory. They have zero effect on Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, or Maps placements. This creates a false sense of security—you add your carefully curated negative keyword list and assume you're protected across all channels, but you're actually only controlling roughly 40-60% of where your ads appear.

For campaigns with significant Display and YouTube spend, this limitation is critical. A negative keyword blocking "free tutorial" searches won't prevent your video ads from showing on YouTube channels about free tutorials. Your Display ads can still appear on websites targeting audiences interested in free alternatives. You've blocked the search term but not the underlying intent across channels.

Match Type Complexity in Multi-Channel Context

Performance Max negative keywords support exact, phrase, and broad match modifiers, but their behavior differs from traditional Search campaigns. In Smart Shopping, negative keywords only needed to consider Shopping ad triggers. In Performance Max, the same negative keyword interacts with search queries, Shopping feeds, audience signals, and asset group targeting simultaneously.

Consider a broad match negative keyword for "cheap." In Search, this clearly blocks queries containing "cheap." But Performance Max's algorithm might still target audiences with affinity for budget shopping on Display or YouTube, showing your ads in contexts that attract the exact searcher profile you're trying to avoid. The negative keyword and audience signal work at cross-purposes.

The Shared List Architectural Challenge

Smart Shopping allowed shared negative keyword lists applied across multiple campaigns efficiently. Performance Max technically supports this, but the multi-channel complexity makes universal lists less effective. What blocks irrelevant traffic for a Search-heavy Performance Max campaign might be counterproductive for a YouTube-heavy version targeting different funnel stages.

Research shows that 80% of accounts examined lacked any account-level negative keywords at all, highlighting widespread underestimation of negative keyword importance in Performance Max. The remaining 20% often applied identical negative lists across all campaigns, missing the strategic opportunity to tailor exclusions based on each campaign's dominant channel mix and objectives.

The Strategic Migration Framework: Preserving Your Negative Keyword Intelligence

Successfully migrating from Smart Shopping to Performance Max while preserving negative keyword logic requires a systematic approach that accounts for channel expansion, algorithm relearning, and Performance Max's unique constraints. This isn't a simple copy-paste operation—it's strategic reconstruction.

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Audit and Documentation

Before Google forces automatic migration or you manually create Performance Max campaigns, conduct a comprehensive audit of your existing negative keyword architecture. This documentation becomes your roadmap for rebuilding protection in the new environment.

Your audit should capture:

• All negative keyword lists: Campaign-level and shared lists with categorization by purpose
• Performance data: Document which negative keywords prevented the most wasted spend in the past 90 days
• Exclusion rationale: Note why each major negative was added (prevents info searches, blocks job seekers, etc.)
• Seasonal patterns: Identify which negatives rotate based on inventory or market timing
• Protected keywords: List terms you specifically did NOT exclude despite borderline relevance

Categorize your negative keywords by function. Universal exclusions that apply regardless of channel belong in one category. Shopping-specific negatives that prevent product feed mismatches belong in another. Search intent negatives targeting query types need separate consideration. This categorization determines how you'll apply them in Performance Max's multi-channel structure.

Phase 2: Channel-Specific Negative Keyword Strategy

Since Performance Max negative keywords only affect Search and Shopping, you need complementary controls for other channels. This multi-layered approach replaces the single-layer protection you had in Smart Shopping.

For Search and Shopping inventory: Migrate your core negative keyword lists but expand them to account for Performance Max's broader query matching. The algorithm's learning period often triggers your ads on wider-than-expected queries. Add broader match negative keywords for clearly irrelevant themes, even if you didn't need them in Smart Shopping's more controlled environment.

For Display and YouTube inventory: Since negative keywords don't apply here, leverage Performance Max's placement exclusions and content suitability controls. Create brand safety lists excluding content categories that attract your negative keyword audience. If you blocked "free" searches, exclude Display and YouTube placements in the "Budget & Discount" content categories.

Align audience signals with negative keyword intent: Your audience signals guide where Performance Max finds customers. If your negative keywords exclude price-sensitive searchers, your audience signals shouldn't target "bargain hunter" or "deal seeker" segments. Review the strategic use of audience signals to ensure consistency with your exclusion strategy.

Phase 3: Asset Group Architecture for Negative Keyword Precision

Performance Max allows up to 100 asset groups per campaign, each with its own audience signals, creative assets, and—critically—the same campaign-level negative keywords. This structure creates both opportunity and risk for negative keyword strategy.

Instead of applying universal negative keywords across all asset groups, consider segmenting campaigns by negative keyword requirements. Create separate Performance Max campaigns for:

• Premium products: Aggressive negative keywords blocking all price-sensitivity indicators
• Mid-market products: Moderate negative keywords allowing "affordable" but blocking "cheap" and "free"
• Promotional products: Minimal negative keywords, allowing deal-seeking traffic during sales periods
• Brand defense: Competitor brand negatives only, maximum visibility for own-brand searches

This campaign-level segmentation allows tailored negative keyword strategies aligned with product positioning and customer value, something impossible in Smart Shopping's more limited structure. The trade-off is increased management complexity, but for accounts with diverse product catalogs, the ROAS improvement justifies the effort.

Phase 4: Learning Period Protection Strategy

Performance Max campaigns enter a learning period lasting typically 1-2 weeks when first launched or after significant changes. During this time, Google's algorithm experiments with placements, audiences, and bids to establish baseline performance. Without proper negative keyword protection, this experimentation happens with wide-open traffic exposure.

Implement a protective launch strategy:

• Start with conservative budgets: Limit daily spend to 50% of your Smart Shopping campaign budget during the first week
• Apply aggressive negatives initially: Better to be overly restrictive during learning than to waste budget on obviously bad traffic
• Monitor search terms daily: Check available search term data every day for the first two weeks to catch unexpected query matching
• Incrementally remove negatives: After 7-10 days of stable performance, cautiously remove overly restrictive negatives one category at a time

According to Performance Max best practices research, regular search term review is essential: weekly for the first month, bi-weekly for months 2-3, then monthly after stabilization. This cadence catches algorithm drift before it compounds into significant wasted spend.

Technical Implementation Tactics for Negative Keyword Migration

Rebuilding Shared Negative Keyword Lists for Performance Max

Your Smart Shopping shared negative keyword lists need reconstruction for Performance Max's different operational context. The goal is maintaining centralized management while accounting for channel-specific needs.

Create a tiered shared list structure:

• Tier 1 - Universal Exclusions: Apply to all Performance Max campaigns regardless of product or objective (e.g., "porn," "illegal," "torrent," "jobs," "salary," "career")
• Tier 2 - Business Model Exclusions: Block searches incompatible with your business model (e.g., "wholesale," "bulk," "distributor" for retail-only businesses)
• Tier 3 - Quality Filters: Exclude modifiers indicating low purchase intent (e.g., "review," "comparison," "vs," "alternative," "reddit")
• Tier 4 - Campaign-Specific: Product category, margin protection, and strategic exclusions unique to each campaign

Shared lists streamline management but require discipline. Document the purpose of each tier and establish governance rules for who can add negatives to which tier. For agencies managing multiple clients, this prevents one account manager's overly aggressive exclusions from impacting all clients.

Match Type Strategy Refinement

Performance Max's multi-channel nature demands more sophisticated match type strategy than Smart Shopping required. The same negative keyword behaves differently across Search versus Shopping inventory.

Use broad match negatives sparingly: Broad match negative keywords can inadvertently block valuable traffic due to Performance Max's expansive query interpretation. Reserve broad match for universally irrelevant terms with no legitimate search context.

Make phrase match your primary tool: Phrase match negatives provide precision without over-blocking. They prevent specific query constructions while allowing related terms that might be relevant in different contexts.

Deploy exact match for surgical exclusions: When you've identified specific queries causing waste but don't want to risk blocking variations, exact match negative keywords provide the most controlled exclusion.

Test match types systematically. Add a negative keyword as phrase match, monitor for two weeks, then evaluate if exact match would be sufficient or if broad match is necessary. This data-driven approach prevents both over-blocking valuable traffic and leaving gaps in protection.

Search Term Mining Methodology for Performance Max

Performance Max provides limited search term visibility compared to traditional Search campaigns. You won't see every query that triggered your ads, only a sample of high-volume terms. This limitation makes your search term review methodology even more critical.

Focus on pattern recognition rather than individual query blocking. When you see irrelevant search terms in Performance Max reports, look for common elements:

• Modifier patterns: Words like "DIY," "homemade," "tutorial" appearing across multiple queries
• Industry jargon: Technical terms attracting wrong audience segments (e.g., "API," "integration" for consumer products)
• Geographic mismatches: Locations mentioned in queries despite location targeting (e.g., "sydney" when targeting US only)
• Competitor brand variants: Different spellings and abbreviations of competitor names

Add these patterns as negative keywords in bulk rather than reacting to individual queries. This proactive approach compensates for limited search term visibility by extrapolating from the sample you can see. For comprehensive guidance on systematic search term analysis, explore pattern recognition frameworks that identify waste before it compounds.

Automation Solutions for Scaling Negative Keyword Management Across Migrated Campaigns

If you're managing negative keywords manually across multiple Performance Max campaigns after migrating from Smart Shopping, you're facing a scalability crisis. The multi-channel complexity and limited search term visibility make manual management exponentially more time-consuming than it was in Smart Shopping.

AI-Powered Search Term Classification

Context-aware AI tools analyze search terms against your business profile and active keywords to classify relevance automatically. Unlike rule-based systems that simply match against negative keyword lists, AI classification understands intent and context.

Consider the search term "cheap laptop." A rule-based system with "cheap" as a negative keyword blocks it universally. But if you sell budget laptops, this is high-intent traffic. AI classification recognizes that "cheap" is irrelevant for luxury goods but valuable for budget products, making intelligent suggestions based on your business context.

Negator.io exemplifies this approach by analyzing search terms using your business profile and keyword context. Instead of automatically blocking terms, it flags queries for review with relevance scoring. This maintains human oversight while dramatically reducing the manual work required to identify what should be excluded.

Cross-Campaign Negative Keyword Propagation

When you discover a wasted search term in one Performance Max campaign, you often need to add it as a negative across multiple campaigns. Manually tracking and applying negatives across 10, 20, or 50 campaigns creates both workload and error risk.

Automation tools with MCC (My Client Center) integration allow you to manage negative keywords across all campaigns from a centralized dashboard. You identify a wasteful pattern once and apply the corresponding negative keyword to all relevant campaigns simultaneously. This capability is particularly valuable for agencies managing multiple client accounts with similar negative keyword requirements.

Equally important is the protected keywords feature—preventing automation from accidentally blocking valuable traffic. You designate certain terms as protected, and the system won't suggest them as negatives even if they have poor performance in one campaign or time period. This safeguard addresses the biggest fear about automation: inadvertently excluding high-value traffic.

Performance Tracking and Reporting

The ROI of negative keyword management is often invisible. You don't see the wasted clicks you prevented—you only see what you spent. This makes justifying time investment or tool costs difficult, especially when migrating from Smart Shopping to Performance Max increases management complexity.

Advanced negative keyword tools track and report prevented waste—the estimated spend you would have incurred without your negative keyword exclusions. This metric transforms negative keyword management from a cost center to a visible profit driver. When you can show that your negative keyword strategy prevented $15,000 in wasted spend last month, budget for tools or team time becomes an easy approval.

For agencies, efficiency metrics are equally critical. Demonstrating that AI-assisted negative keyword management reduced search term review time from 12 hours per week to 2 hours while improving ROAS by 25% makes the business case clear. Learn more about calculating the true ROI of negative keyword automation compared to manual management.

Common Migration Mistakes That Sabotage Negative Keyword Strategy

Mistake 1: Assuming Automatic Migration Provided Adequate Protection

Google's automatic migration from Smart Shopping to Performance Max technically transferred your negative keywords, leading many advertisers to assume their protection remained intact. This assumption causes significant wasted spend in the weeks following migration.

The transferred negatives apply only to Search and Shopping inventory within Performance Max. Your newly created campaign now serves ads on Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps with zero negative keyword protection on those channels. Additionally, the algorithm learning period often matches your ads to broader queries than Smart Shopping did, rendering some previously sufficient negatives inadequate.

Conduct a post-migration audit within 48 hours of campaign launch. Review placement reports, search terms, and conversion data to identify gaps in protection. Don't wait for monthly reporting to discover your ads appeared on irrelevant YouTube channels or Display placements for two weeks.

Mistake 2: Applying Universal Negative Keyword Lists Without Campaign Differentiation

The efficiency of shared negative keyword lists is seductive—build one comprehensive list and apply it everywhere. This approach worked adequately in Smart Shopping's more limited scope but often backfires in Performance Max's multi-channel, multi-objective environment.

Different Performance Max campaigns serve different purposes. A Performance Max campaign focused on new customer acquisition might aggressively exclude brand terms and competitor comparisons to force cold traffic. A separate campaign targeting existing customers for repeat purchases should allow those same terms. Applying identical negative keywords across both campaigns undermines their distinct strategies.

Develop differentiated negative keyword strategies based on campaign objectives, product categories, and customer value. Use shared lists for universally irrelevant terms but create campaign-specific lists for strategic exclusions. For detailed guidance on structuring negative keyword governance, review enterprise-level governance models that balance efficiency with strategic flexibility.

Mistake 3: Neglecting Ongoing Negative Keyword Maintenance

Many advertisers build negative keyword lists during initial campaign setup and then largely ignore them. This set-it-and-forget-it approach is particularly problematic in Performance Max, where the algorithm continuously explores new placements and audiences.

Performance Max's algorithm adapts based on performance signals, which can cause gradual drift in the types of searches and placements triggering your ads. A negative keyword list that provided adequate protection in month one may have significant gaps by month three as the algorithm finds new audience segments and query patterns.

Establish a systematic maintenance schedule: weekly search term review for the first month, bi-weekly for months 2-3, then monthly ongoing. During these reviews, look not just for individual bad queries but for emerging patterns suggesting new negative keyword categories. Document changes in a change log to track how your negative keyword strategy evolves and identify seasonal patterns.

Mistake 4: Over-Blocking During the Panic Phase

When advertisers first see Performance Max search term reports showing expensive clicks on irrelevant queries, the natural response is aggressive negative keyword addition. This panic response often leads to over-blocking that restricts valuable traffic and prevents the algorithm from finding profitable segments.

You see searches for "best budget [product]" with poor initial conversion rates and add "budget" as a broad match negative keyword. This blocks "budget" in all contexts, including valuable queries like "best [product] for budget-conscious professionals" or "enterprise budget management [product]." You've prevented waste from one query pattern while accidentally blocking potentially valuable variations.

Use surgical precision rather than broad strokes. Add negatives as phrase or exact match initially, monitor the impact for 7-14 days, then decide if broader blocking is justified. Test exclusions in one campaign before applying across all campaigns. This measured approach prevents over-correction that damages performance. Understand the paradox where blocking more traffic can actually decrease profitability by restricting algorithm learning.

Advanced Tactics for Enterprise-Scale Migration

Product Feed and Negative Keyword Alignment

For e-commerce advertisers, Performance Max's Shopping inventory relies on your product feed. Misalignment between feed optimization and negative keyword strategy creates gaps where irrelevant traffic slips through both filters.

Review your product feed titles and descriptions for terms that might trigger unwanted matches. If your product titles include words like "professional" or "industrial" because that's accurate nomenclature, but you want to exclude DIY consumers, you need negative keywords specifically blocking "DIY," "home," "personal use," etc., to counteract the feed's own language.

Use custom labels in your product feed to segment products by negative keyword requirements. Create separate asset groups for products requiring aggressive price-sensitivity exclusions versus products positioned for value-conscious buyers. This feed-level segmentation enables more precise negative keyword application at the asset group level.

Seasonal Negative Keyword Rotation Strategy

Your negative keyword requirements change with seasons, inventory levels, and market conditions. A term that's irrelevant in Q1 might be valuable in Q4. Maintaining static negative keyword lists year-round leaves money on the table or creates waste depending on the season.

Examples of seasonal rotation:

• Holiday merchandise: Remove "gift" and "present" negatives in November-December, re-add in January
• Tax season services: Remove "last minute" negatives in March-April when urgency is valuable
• Inventory-dependent: Add brand-specific negatives when competitor products are out of stock
• Promotional periods: Remove price-sensitivity negatives during actual sales events

Build a seasonal negative keyword calendar documenting when specific exclusions should be added or removed. This prevents leaving inefficient negatives in place out of forgetfulness and ensures you capitalize on seasonal opportunities. Many advertisers discover that systematic seasonal rotation adds 8-15% to annual revenue by not blocking valuable seasonal traffic.

Multi-Language and Geographic Negative Keyword Strategy

For advertisers targeting multiple countries or languages, Performance Max's global reach creates negative keyword complexity that didn't exist in geographically limited Smart Shopping campaigns.

Negative keywords must be added in all relevant languages. A campaign targeting both English and Spanish speakers needs "free" and "gratis" as negatives. "Cheap" requires exclusions for "barato," "económico," and "rebaja." Missing language variations leaves protection gaps for non-English queries.

Cultural context affects negative keyword selection. Terms considered low-intent in one market might be high-intent in another. "Discount" might be a negative for luxury positioning in the US but perfectly acceptable for the same products in price-sensitive markets. This requires market-specific negative keyword lists rather than universal translation of a single list.

Consider creating separate Performance Max campaigns for different geographic markets with tailored negative keyword strategies. This increases management complexity but allows optimization for local search behavior, competitive dynamics, and pricing sensitivity.

Measuring Success: KPIs for Negative Keyword Migration Effectiveness

Beyond ROAS: Comprehensive Metrics That Reveal Negative Keyword Impact

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the ultimate performance metric, but it's a lagging indicator that doesn't reveal whether your negative keyword strategy is working or if results come from other factors. You need leading indicators that specifically measure negative keyword effectiveness.

Search Impression Share Lost (Budget): If this metric decreases after adding negative keywords, you've successfully reduced wasted spend on irrelevant auctions, freeing budget for valuable impressions. This is a direct measure of efficiency gain from negative keyword optimization.

Average CPC Trends: Effective negative keywords should gradually decrease your average CPC by eliminating high-cost, low-value clicks. Track week-over-week CPC changes segmented by campaign. Sustained CPC reduction while maintaining or improving conversion volume indicates successful negative keyword implementation.

Conversion Rate by Traffic Segment: Compare conversion rates for Search versus Shopping versus other channels within Performance Max. If Search conversion rate improves significantly after negative keyword updates while Shopping remains stable, you've successfully filtered low-intent search traffic while preserving Shopping performance.

Time Efficiency Metrics for Agency Operations

For agencies managing multiple client migrations from Smart Shopping to Performance Max, operational efficiency directly impacts profitability. Track metrics that reveal whether your negative keyword management process is scalable.

Hours per account for search term review: Measure time spent on negative keyword management before and after implementing systematic processes or automation tools. A mature process should reduce this from 8-12 hours per account monthly to 2-4 hours.

Negative keywords added per hour of management time: This productivity metric reveals process efficiency. Manual review might yield 15-25 quality negative keywords per hour. AI-assisted review can increase this to 50-100 per hour by pre-filtering obvious irrelevancies and flagging high-priority additions.

Waste prevented per dollar of management cost: Calculate the ratio of prevented wasted spend to the cost (time or tools) of achieving that prevention. This ROI metric justifies investment in better processes or automation. A 10:1 ratio is good; 20:1 or higher is excellent.

Future-Proofing Your Negative Keyword Strategy in the Performance Max Era

Anticipating Google's Continued Algorithm Evolution

Performance Max represents Google's push toward full automation with minimal advertiser control. The introduction of campaign-level negative keywords in late 2024 was a concession to advertiser demands, but Google's long-term direction is clear: more automation, less manual control. Your negative keyword strategy must adapt to this trajectory.

Google's integration of Gemini AI into advertising systems will likely change how negative keywords function. The algorithm may eventually override negative keywords when it believes the exclusion prevents valuable conversions, similar to how close variant matching already bypasses exact match keywords. Build flexibility into your strategy by focusing on principles (traffic quality, intent filtering, margin protection) rather than rigid keyword lists.

Privacy Changes and Signal Loss

Ongoing privacy regulations and browser restrictions continue reducing available targeting signals. As third-party cookies disappear and user tracking becomes more limited, Google's algorithms rely increasingly on first-party data and conversion signals. This shift affects how negative keywords interact with campaign optimization.

Your first-party data becomes more valuable for guiding algorithm learning. Feed Performance Max campaigns high-quality conversion data, customer lists, and offline conversion imports. This positive signal helps the algorithm learn faster what you want, reducing reliance on negative keywords to block what you don't want. The combination of strong positive signals and strategic negative keywords creates more efficient learning than either alone.

Building a Cross-Platform Negative Signal Strategy

Advertisers increasingly run campaigns across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta platforms, and other channels. Your negative keyword intelligence shouldn't be siloed within Google Ads—it's valuable across all platforms.

Develop a centralized exclusion library that documents not just keywords but the underlying intent or audience characteristics you want to avoid. This abstraction allows you to apply the same strategic thinking across platforms with different technical implementations. Google Ads uses negative keywords; Meta uses audience exclusions; other platforms have their own mechanisms. The strategy remains consistent even as tactics vary by platform.

Conclusion: Turning Forced Migration Into Strategic Advantage

Google's forced migration from Smart Shopping to Performance Max disrupted carefully built negative keyword strategies, but it also created an opportunity to rebuild them more strategically. The advertisers who treat this migration as a fresh start rather than a frustrating inconvenience will emerge with more sophisticated traffic quality controls than they had in Smart Shopping.

The key principles for successful migration are:

• Document before you migrate: Audit your existing negative keyword strategy to understand what worked and why
• Think multi-channel: Performance Max requires channel-specific protection strategies beyond just negative keywords
• Segment by objective: Different campaigns need different negative keyword approaches based on goals and target customers
• Build systematic processes: Regular review and maintenance prevent algorithm drift from eroding your protection
• Leverage intelligent automation: AI-powered tools that understand context scale your efforts without sacrificing control

Your competitors are likely approaching Performance Max migration reactively, letting Google's automatic process handle everything and hoping for the best. By systematically preserving and enhancing your negative keyword logic during migration, you gain competitive advantage through superior traffic quality and more efficient budget allocation.

The Smart Shopping sunset doesn't have to mean the sunset of strategic traffic control. With the right approach, Performance Max becomes not just a forced migration but an opportunity to build more sophisticated, multi-channel negative keyword strategies that deliver better results than Smart Shopping ever could. Start your migration with intention, maintain it with discipline, and measure it with precision—your ROAS will reflect the difference.