Maximize clicks is a Google Ads automated bid strategy that sets bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It is automated but it is not Smart Bidding: it does no auction-time bidding toward conversions, so a campaign using it will ignore your conversion goal when it bids.
What it optimizes for
Clicks, and only clicks. You are telling Google to spend the budget on as much traffic as it can find, which means you control quantity rather than quality. Google groups it with Target impression share as automated bidding without auction-time bidding, which is what separates both from Smart Bidding proper.
The trap
A campaign can display a conversion goal and still run Maximize clicks underneath, and nothing in the interface flags the mismatch. The symptom is healthy clicks and CTR with flat or wrong-fit conversions, which teams usually misdiagnose as a landing page problem. We cover the check in your campaign says it's optimizing for leads, and why we skip this strategy entirely in why we start on Maximize conversions.