Google Search Partners: Should You Opt Out?

Google Search Partners is switched on by default for most Search campaigns, which means part of your budget may be going to sites that are not Google. Whether that is a problem depends on your account, and you can find out in about ten minutes. Switching it off on reflex is as lazy as leaving it on without looking.

What Search Partners actually is

Google Ads describes the Search Network as a group of search-related websites and apps where your ads can appear. Google's own properties sit inside that: Search results, Google Maps, Google Images and the Shopping tab. Search Partners are the third-party sites and apps layered on top, plus YouTube search results and Watch pages.

Google is candid about the trade-off. Its own help page says that clicks from these sites "may not always reflect highly targeted traffic". Read that as a prompt to check, not as a reason to panic.

What Google says, and what it leaves out

Google's Search Partner Network explainer makes several claims worth knowing. It says around 90% of Search Partner impressions come from the top 100 sites and apps, so the network is more concentrated than the phrase "hundreds of websites" suggests. It also says sites actioned for policy violations accounted for 0.002% of impressions between May and November 2023, and that advertisers who enable Search Partners see on average a measurable increase in both clicks and conversions.

Notice what that last claim does not say. An increase in clicks and conversions tells you nothing about cost per conversion. More volume at a worse price is not a win if your target is a fixed cost per lead. It is also an average across all advertisers, and your account is not the average. A Manchester plumber bidding on emergency terms and a software firm bidding on comparison terms will see different traffic quality from the same network.

How to check your own account

Do not rely on anyone's averages, including ours. Your account will tell you.

Segment by network. In Google Ads, open a Search campaign, go to the segment menu and choose Network (with search partners). You will see Google Search and Search Partners as separate rows, with their own spend, clicks, conversions and cost per conversion.

Compare cost per conversion, not click-through rate. Search Partner click-through rate has no effect on your Quality Score, according to Google's help page, so a weak rate there will not drag your Google Search performance down. The number that matters is what a lead or sale costs on each side.

Look at the sample size. If Search Partners has spent £40 and produced one conversion, you have learned nothing. Give it enough spend to be meaningful before you act, and look across a window long enough to cover your normal sales cycle.

Check conversion quality as well as count. If you are tracking leads into a CRM, compare how many Search Partner leads become real customers. A cheap form fill that never answers the phone is a common warning sign, and it is the reason offline conversion tracking matters.

When to switch it off

Opt out when Search Partners is clearly more expensive per conversion than Google Search, when the leads it produces do not turn into customers, or when you run a tight local or high-value campaign where every pound has to work hard. Opting out means your ads are shown only on Google Search, and you can do it per campaign.

If you are running a small budget, the case for opting out is stronger. A campaign spending a few hundred pounds a month cannot afford to send a slice of its spend to a placement it has no data on, and a small account will not generate enough conversions to prove Search Partners is paying its way.

When to leave it on

Leave it on when the segment report shows Search Partners converting at a similar or better cost than Google Search. That does happen, particularly for accounts with plenty of conversion data and Smart Bidding doing the work, where the system can bid down on weak placements automatically. Removing a source of cheap conversions because it sounds untrustworthy is a bad trade.

The honest position is that this is a test, not a rule. Review it quarterly, because both the network and your account change.

The mistake to avoid

The common error is making this decision once, at launch, and never revisiting it. Another is opting out of everything across the account because of a blog post. Treat the setting like any other: look at the numbers, decide by campaign, and write down why.

If you want a second pair of eyes on where your Google Ads budget is really going, our Google Ads service starts with exactly this kind of audit. You can also see how we approach accounts in our case studies, or get in touch and we will go through your network segmentation with you.