There’s a shift happening in search that most business owners haven’t clocked yet — ads are moving from matching keywords to anticipating intent. And it changes how you should think about what you sell and how you describe it.
Over the past year, Google’s Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin has been explaining the direction search is heading, and the picture is becoming clearer: Google is moving away from literal keyword matching towards inferring what people actually want. Which sounds technical, but it matters enormously for anyone selling products online.
The Death of Keywords (Again, But This Time They Mean It)
Here’s what’s changing: Google’s moving away from keyword matching towards what they’re calling “intent inference.” What does that actually mean for your business?
When someone searches for “waterproof jacket,” Google used to match that phrase to your keywords and product titles. Now, they’re trying to understand the underlying intent—are they hiking in Scotland in February? Running errands in light drizzle? Sailing off the coast?
The system looks at context, previous searches, location, time of year, and dozens of other signals to infer what someone actually needs. Then it shows them products that match that inferred intent, even if the words don’t line up perfectly.
This is why your product data matters more than ever. Google needs rich information to make these inferences—detailed descriptions, accurate categories, proper attributes. The era of keyword-stuffed titles is well and truly over. Instead, you need comprehensive, accurate product information that helps Google understand what you’re actually selling and who needs it.
How the Auction Actually Works (Straight from the Source)
It’s not just about who bids highest. The auction considers three main factors: your bid, your ad quality, and the expected impact of ad extensions and formats. What matters for your business is the quality score—which includes expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience—and it can dramatically affect what you actually pay per click.
Two advertisers bidding the same amount can pay wildly different costs per click based on quality. The one with better ads, more relevant landing pages, and higher expected engagement pays less. This is why you can’t just throw money at Google Ads and expect results—the quality of your setup matters as much as your budget.
One particularly interesting point: impression share isn’t always what it seems. If you’re getting 60% impression share, you might assume you’re missing 40% of possible traffic. But some of that “lost” impression share might be searches where your ads wouldn’t have been relevant anyway. As intent inference gets stronger, Google is getting more selective about when to show your ads—which can actually be a good thing if it means you’re not wasting budget on irrelevant clicks.
The Cookie Crumbles (And What You Should Actually Do About It)
While everyone’s been watching the AI announcements, there’s something else happening that affects how you track and target customers: the ongoing death of third-party cookies.
This isn’t news—we’ve known it’s coming for years. But what matters now is what you’re doing about it. The industry consensus is clear: first-party data is your insurance policy.
What does that mean in practice? It’s the data you collect directly from customers—email addresses, purchase history, website behaviour from logged-in users. Things like:
- Email newsletter signups
- Customer accounts on your website
- Purchase history and order data
- Loyalty programme information
- Direct customer interactions and preferences
This data belongs to you, doesn’t rely on third-party cookies, and becomes increasingly valuable as cookies disappear. You can use it to build customer lists for remarketing, create lookalike audiences, and maintain targeting capabilities even as the cookie-based tracking ecosystem falls apart.
The businesses doing this well aren’t waiting for cookies to disappear—they’re building these first-party data strategies now. If you’re not collecting email addresses and building customer accounts into your e-commerce experience, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to the post-cookie future.
What the Industry Numbers Tell Us
The most recent PPC industry survey makes for interesting reading. A few things worth your attention:
Generative AI is everywhere now—most PPC professionals are using it for ad copy, analysis, and strategy work. But here’s what matters: it’s a tool, not a replacement. The professionals getting good results are using AI to handle repetitive tasks and generate ideas, then applying human judgment to refine and improve the output.
Performance Max continues to dominate budget allocation for e-commerce businesses, which isn’t surprising. But—and this is important—Performance Max campaigns run across multiple channels: Shopping, Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, and Gmail. Your Shopping ads within Performance Max might perform very differently than your Search ads, so if you’re running PMAX, it’s worth digging into the data to see where your budget is actually going and what’s driving results.
The survey also showed that agency relationships are shifting. Businesses are looking for specialists who understand their specific industry and can provide strategic guidance, not just campaign execution. Which is exactly why you need someone who knows your business, not just a rotating cast of junior account managers.
One Boring But Important Thing
Notices have been going out about EU political advertising verification requirements. Unless you’re running political ads in the EU, you can safely ignore this—but you do need to confirm you’re not running political ads by 31 March 2026, or your account could face restrictions.
It’s a simple checkbox exercise, but don’t ignore the email when it arrives. These compliance requirements are Google covering themselves from regulatory pressure, and they will enforce them.
What This All Means Going Forward
The thread running through all of this is that Google Ads is becoming more sophisticated at understanding intent and context, but also more dependent on quality data to make it work. The businesses that will succeed are the ones who provide rich product information, build first-party customer data, and understand how these automated systems actually function.
You can’t just set it and forget it anymore. But you also can’t micromanage every keyword like it’s 2010. The sweet spot is understanding how these systems work, providing them with quality inputs, and maintaining strategic oversight without getting lost in tactical details that the AI handles better anyway.
That’s what these changes mean for your business: less time on keywords, more time on strategy, product data, and customer relationships. Which, honestly, is where your time should have been all along.