How to exclude placements in Performance Max

Performance Max has no campaign-level placement list: you block sites, apps and YouTube channels or videos once, at the account level, and every campaign uses that list. Google allows up to 65,000 placement exclusions per account, and new ones usually take effect within 12 hours. You can’t exclude youtube.com itself, but the rest of this page covers what you can block and where to find the placements worth blocking.

What a placement is

A placement is a place your ad appeared outside Google Search: a website, a mobile app, a YouTube video or channel, or a search partner site. Performance Max chooses placements for you across YouTube, the Display Network (websites and apps that show Google ads), Discover, Gmail, Maps and search partners.

Most placements are fine. But some are a poor fit for a small business: kids’ video channels, mobile games, or sites unrelated to what you sell. Clicks there cost real money and rarely turn into a sale, call or form.

What you can and can’t exclude in Performance Max

Control	What it blocks	Where it applies
Account-level placement exclusions	Specific sites, apps, YouTube channels and videos	Display, YouTube and search partners, in every campaign
Content suitability (inventory type, sensitive content, content keywords)	Types of content your ads appear next to	YouTube, Display and video partners
Campaign negative keywords	Searches you don’t want	Search and Shopping only
Brand exclusions	Searches for a brand, including misspellings	Search and Shopping only
Channel prioritization (rolling out)	Spend on search partners or the Display Network	Budget share, not single placements

What you can’t do:

• Exclude youtube.com, or any other Google-owned site, as a placement.
• Turn off a single channel like YouTube. Google groups Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover as “Google channels.”
• Set placement exclusions for just one Performance Max campaign.

How to find placements worth excluding

1. Go to Campaigns, open Insights and reports, then Report editor.
2. Click the predefined report Performance Max campaigns placement.
3. Set a date range of at least 30 days and sort by Impr. (impressions).

(If you can’t find it, search for “report editor” in the Google Ads search bar.)

The report lists websites, mobile apps and YouTube videos, with impressions. Google says it includes search partner sites, and that Google Search itself is never a placement. Google also says not to use it to judge performance: it’s a brand safety tool. Look for placements that clearly don’t fit your customers, not for ones with “bad numbers.”

For a wider view, the Content suitability report (in Report editor, under When and where ads showed) shows impressions by channel, domain or video.

How to exclude placements in Performance Max

1. Go to Tools, then Content suitability.
2. Open Advanced settings.
3. Expand Excluded placements.
4. Enter a website address, app, YouTube channel ID or video URL, or browse for one. To add many at once, choose Enter multiple placements and paste a list.
5. Click Save.

(If you can’t find it, search for “excluded placements” in the Google Ads search bar.)

A few tips from Google’s help:

• Leave off “www.” to block the whole site, including its subdomains and pages.
• On search partners, subdomain and single-page exclusions don’t work. Exclude the main domain.
• Country versions of a site, like example.co.uk and example.com, need separate entries.
• You can add up to 20,000 at a time and 65,000 per account.

If you work through a manager account, you can also build placement exclusion lists there and apply them to client accounts.

Other exclusion controls

Content suitability. On the same Content suitability page, choose an inventory type for YouTube, Display and video partners: Maximum (the default), Moderate or Limited. Under Advanced settings you can also exclude sensitive content categories and content keywords. Google calls these “best effort,” so related content can still slip through.

Negative keywords. In a Performance Max campaign, you can add up to 10,000 negative keywords. You can also add up to 1,000 account-level negative keywords under Admin, then Account settings. Both apply to Search and Shopping only.

Brand exclusions. In the campaign’s Settings, under Other settings, choose Brand exclusions and pick a brand list. Google says this also blocks misspellings and searches in other languages. Use it to keep Performance Max off searches for your own name, or a competitor’s, on Search and Shopping.

Channel prioritization. In October 2026, Google began rolling out Channel prioritization. For Performance Max you can set search partners and the Display Network to Low priority and give each a share of the daily budget. Google says 0% means it won’t spend there. It’s rolling out slowly, so you may not have it yet.

When to hold back

Account-level exclusions affect every campaign, including Search campaigns on search partners and any Display campaigns you run. Google warns that exclusions can reduce reach. Block placements that clearly don’t fit, not every site with a few impressions.

If you’re excluding to save money on YouTube or Display, check the numbers first in the Performance Max channel report. Exclusions won’t fix weak conversion tracking, either.

Check it automatically

The free SpendCanary scan doesn’t check single placements. It reads each Performance Max campaign’s cost and conversions by channel and flags a campaign when more than half of its cost outside Search costs at least twice as much per conversion as Search. That tells you where exclusions are worth a look.