Google Ads has started removing the language setting from Search campaigns and the Search side of Performance Max. Here is what changed and the 20-minute leakage audit Indian bilingual advertisers should run.
01Google Ads is removing the campaign-level language targeting setting from Search campaigns, with the change starting in September 2026 and live accounts losing it from 3 November 2026.
02Google Ads Search ads now match users based on the language of the ad, the language of the search term and the user’s language settings.
03Performance Max language settings still apply to YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail, but no longer to the Google Search Network.
04Indian advertisers running English and Hindi or regional campaigns should keep separate campaigns for budget control and never mix languages inside one ad group.
Open a Google Ads Search campaign this week and the language setting may simply not be there. Google has started removing campaign-level language targeting from Search and from the Search slice of Performance Max, so your ad copy and landing page now decide which language audience you reach.
For Indian advertisers running English, Hindi and regional campaigns side by side, that is a bigger deal than Google’s “no action required” line suggests. Here is what changed and the 20-minute audit we would run before the next budget review.
Yes, for Search. Google’s help page says the campaign-level language setting is being removed from Search campaigns starting September 2026, and that Search ads will match automatically based on the language of your ads. Practitioners began reporting the setting missing from live accounts on 3 November 2026.
The rollout is patchy. Thomas Eccel, a Google Ads practitioner who writes the PPC Times newsletter, posted on LinkedIn that he went looking for the setting and couldn’t find it. Others told PPC Land it still shows in Google Ads Editor, or hasn’t reached their accounts at all.
Google first said the setting would leave Search by the end of 2025, missed that, and in August 2026 Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Product Liaison, set September 2026 as the new start.
We compared the earlier behaviour with what Google’s About language targeting page now says. The short version: Search loses the switch, everything else keeps it.
| Area | Before | From September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Search campaigns | You picked one or more languages per campaign | Setting removed; ads match on the language of your ads |
| Performance Max, Search Network | Campaign language applied | Campaign language no longer applies; behaves like standard Search |
| Performance Max, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail | Campaign language applied | Unchanged, still applies |
| Shopping ads inside Performance Max | Not governed by language | Unchanged |
| Language exclusions | Not supported | Still not supported |
| Google Ads API | Language criteria accepted on Search | Adding language criteria to Search returns an error, per Search Engine Land |
Google’s help page lists the signals it now relies on for Search: the language of the search term, plus the user’s language settings and preferences. A user’s languages can include any they’ve set, regularly use or search in.
Google says it prioritises the ad that matches the language of the search term, then uses the user’s language settings and history to judge what else they understand. When several of your campaigns or ad groups are eligible, an AI-based prioritisation picks the most relevant ad language at auction time.
Google’s AdsLiaison account told Search Engine Roundtable that this choice happens per user and per auction. Google also does not translate your creatives. If you have no Hindi ad, a Hindi searcher who also reads English can still be shown your English one.
The Hinglish gap: Google documents how it reads Devanagari or Tamil script queries. It does not say how it classifies Romanised Hindi like “sasta health insurance plan”. Treat that bucket as unknown until your search terms report tells you otherwise.
Control over budget splits by language is the real casualty. If you ran a Hindi campaign with its own budget to protect Hindi-belt reach in Lucknow, Jaipur or Patna, the language setting was your fence. Now the fence is the copy itself.
Three account types feel it most. Brands with “All languages” set on an English campaign. Advertisers who reused English landing pages for Hindi ads. And small accounts with one campaign, where Rafiqul Islam, a lead-generation marketer, told PPC Land the practical risk is highest.
The language setting used to be your fence. From now on, your ad copy and landing page are the fence.
Take a hypothetical ₹1 lakh a month Search account: ₹70,000 on an English campaign, ₹30,000 on a Hindi one. Suppose 12% of the English campaign’s spend lands on Devanagari-script queries after the change. That is ₹8,400 a month, about ₹1 lakh a year, paying for English ads in front of people who searched in Hindi.
That figure is illustrative, not a benchmark. Your share could be 2% or 20%, and you can measure it in minutes.
No. Keep separate campaigns per language, but for budget control and clean reporting, not targeting. Eccel gives the same advice on LinkedIn and adds a rule we agree with: never mix languages inside one ad group, because the ad’s language is now the only signal you directly control.
Consolidation fans will disagree, and they have a point. Google has pushed fewer, bigger campaigns for years, and AI Max for Search already blurs keyword boundaries. If your Hindi campaign gets 40 clicks a week, it may learn faster folded into the main one. For anything with real volume, we would keep the split.
Pull the last 30 days of search terms for each campaign and flag every query by script. Compare where Hindi or regional-script queries actually landed against where you intended them to land, then fix the copy or landing page that is pulling traffic into the wrong campaign.
If you run the API or scripts, strip language criteria from any new Search campaign builds now, or they will fail. Our guide to AI Max for Search controls covers the related settings worth locking down at the same time.
Don’t panic and don’t consolidate. Google’s matching on query language is probably better than the old setting for most English-only advertisers, who can ignore this. Bilingual and regional advertisers in India should run the leakage audit this week, because nobody, Google included, has shown how Romanised Hindi queries get treated. Measure first, then trust.
We are logging this change in our running Google Ads updates 2026 tracker. If you are rebuilding campaigns from scratch, start with the Google Ads guide, and tighten waste with negative keywords, which still block wasted queries in any script.
No. Google is removing the campaign-level language setting from Search campaigns starting September 2026. Search ads now match automatically based on the language of your ads and the user’s search term and settings.
Partly. The Performance Max language setting no longer applies to ads on the Google Search Network, but it still applies to YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail. Shopping ads inside Performance Max are not affected.
No. Google does not translate ad creatives. If you want to reach Hindi or regional-language searchers, you need ads and landing pages written in that language.
Usually not. Separate campaigns per language still give you budget control and clean reporting. Very low-volume language campaigns may be the exception.
Existing criteria can stay or be removed. Adding language criteria to Search campaigns now returns an error, so update scripts and API builds for new Search campaigns.
Digital Evangelist and Entrepreneur at Clickseek Digital. A results-oriented marketing leader with an 18+ year track record driving transformative growth for diverse global businesses. Expert in performance marketing, demand generation, customer acquisition, strategic partnerships, and market expansion within B2B SaaS, Consumer-Tech, Fintech, Travel/Hospitality, and CRM/ITES Solutions sectors. IIM alumnus with a strong analytical background and a string of accolades, including "Top 50 Most Influential E-Commerce Professional of India" and "Top 100 Digital Marketer of India."
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