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Google's Bidding Defaults Aren't Optimizing For You

October 10, 2026

PPC Land laid it out plainly: Google's August 17 bidding update, the AI Max defaults rolling through Search campaigns, and recent court findings on ad pricing all point the same direction. Google is optimizing Google's revenue. Nobody is optimizing yours unless you do it yourself.

Here's the part that should bother you. AI Max defaults aren't a suggestion sitting in a settings menu waiting for your approval. They're a default, which means the account quietly adopts them unless someone goes in and says no. Most marketing directors are not auditing bid strategy monthly. Most are checking lead volume and move-ins, trusting the platform to behave like a vendor instead of a competitor for the same dollar.

It isn't. Google's incentive is spend, not cost per lease. Those are not the same number, and the gap between them is where your budget goes to die quietly, one auto-applied recommendation at a time.

So pull the account. Check whether AI Max is on and whether anyone chose that on purpose. Check what bid strategy is actually running versus what you think is running, because those drift apart more than people admit. Compare cost per lead this quarter against a quarter before the August changes landed, not against last month, because last month already absorbed the shift.

Nobody at Google is going to call you when the new default costs you a lease. That call is yours to make, and it's overdue.

Source: PPC Land, October 10, 2026