Google Search Partners is one of the largest sources of wasted spend that your search terms report will not clearly show you. It is a network of non-Google sites and apps that display Google-powered search results, and your Search and Shopping ads run on it by default. The clicks are usually cheaper than Google Search, which flatters your average CPC, but the intent behind them is weaker and the conversion rate is often far lower. The result is spend that leaks quietly out of the same campaigns you are diligently cleaning with negatives — while the tool you use to find waste, the search terms report, gives you almost no way to isolate it.
This post is about treating Search Partners as a traffic-quality lever in its own right. Search Engine Land's case for the network is blunt: for most advertisers, Search Partner placements routinely convert poorly and the safe default is to opt out. We will cover what the network actually is, why the search terms report cannot help you prune it, how to measure it in two minutes with the network segment, and when the right move is the opt-out checkbox rather than another hour of negative-keyword mining.
What the Search Partner Network actually is
The Search Partner Network is a collection of third-party sites, apps, and search engines that show Google search results and, alongside them, your ads. It includes some Google-owned surfaces such as YouTube's search results, but the bulk of it is an undisclosed list of external properties: smaller search engines, online directories, and in-app search boxes that syndicate Google's results. When someone searches on one of those properties and your keyword matches, your ad can serve there and you pay for the click exactly as you would on Google Search. Critically, the network is switched on by default when you build a Search campaign, so most accounts are running on it without ever having chosen to.
The reason it matters for traffic quality is that a click is not a click. A query typed into Google Search carries the intent you optimised your keywords around. A click from a parked domain, a toolbar search box, or an unfamiliar directory carries much less — and sometimes none, in the case of accidental or low-quality traffic. Advertisers have pushed Google for years on how opaque this inventory is; following an Adalytics investigation, Google extended the ability to opt out of the Search Partner Network across campaign types, which tells you how seriously practitioners take the quality question. The cheaper CPC is not a discount; it is usually the price of weaker intent.
Why the search terms report can't prune it
Here is the blind spot: the search terms report blends Google Search and Search Partner queries into one list with no per-network column. You can see the terms, but you cannot reliably tell which ones came from a partner site versus Google Search itself, so you cannot target your negatives at the partner traffic specifically. And even if you could identify a bad partner query, a negative keyword applies to both networks at once — there is no way to negate a term on Search Partners while keeping it live on Google Search. The query-level tools you normally reach for simply do not have a network dimension to grip.
That is a real departure from how the rest of this work operates. Elsewhere the discipline is to read the search terms report, find the wasteful patterns, and negate them, and it is the right discipline for Google Search traffic. But Search Partners does not respond to it, because the report cannot segment by network and the negative cannot be scoped to one network. The control that is per-network lives somewhere else entirely: the include/exclude toggle in campaign settings. So the mental model has to shift — for SPN you are not pruning queries, you are deciding whether to run on the network at all, and that decision has to be made on segmented performance data rather than on the term list.
The two-minute diagnostic: segment by network
The fastest way to know whether Search Partners is helping or leaking is the network segment. In the campaigns or keywords view, apply Segment → Network (with search partners), and each row splits into Google Search, Search Partners, and Display. Now put the Google Search line next to the Search Partners line and compare the metrics that describe quality rather than volume: conversion rate, cost per conversion, and conversion value per cost. Do it over a window with enough conversions to mean something — a handful of conversions is noise, not a verdict. The pattern you are looking for is a Search Partners line that costs more per conversion than Google Search, or one that has accumulated real spend against near-zero conversions.
This is a settings-level view, not a query-level one, and that is exactly why it is the primary diagnostic for SPN: it gives you the per-network comparison the search terms report withholds. It slots naturally into a standing search hygiene audit and into a wasted-spend scorecard as one more line item: what does the Search Partners segment cost, and what does it return? If you cannot answer that from memory, you are almost certainly running on the network by default and have never actually checked whether it earns its budget.
When the fix is the opt-out, not more negatives
For standard Search campaigns, if the segment shows Search Partners underperforming, the correct fix is to exclude the network — a single checkbox in campaign settings — not to keep mining negatives in the hope of cleaning it up. Negatives cannot reach partner-specific traffic, so pouring more of them into the campaign will not move the SPN line; it only risks throttling good Google Search traffic in pursuit of a problem that lives on a network your negatives do not control. The opt-out is the leverage point precisely because it is the only control scoped to the network.
Treat it as a reversible test rather than a permanent verdict. Record the Search Partners segment's clicks, cost, and conversions, opt out, then compare the next comparable period. If cost per conversion improves and conversions hold, the traffic you dropped was not paying its way and you have reclaimed budget with one click. If genuine conversions fall, opt back in and keep the network. The point is that this is a deliberate, measured decision with a clear lever, unlike the fuzzy, query-by-query grind the search terms report pushes you toward — a grind that, for this particular slice of traffic, cannot work by design.
The Performance Max exception
Performance Max is the case where the opt-out does not exist. Search Partners is baked into the campaign type, so you cannot switch it off the way you can in a standard Search campaign. What changed recently is visibility: Google now surfaces Search Partner placements in Performance Max channel reporting, so you can at least see the network's contribution rather than inferring it from a single blended figure. For a network you cannot exclude, that reporting is the whole game — it tells you how much of the campaign is running on partner inventory even though you have no toggle to act on directly.
This is the same theme as the wider PMax reporting story, where per-channel data finally lets you see where the budget lands. It pairs with the channel-field split in PMax reporting and with the Performance Max search terms report and channel-level negatives: you cannot opt out of Search Partners in PMax, but you can measure it, and you can use brand exclusions and channel-aware negatives to shape the Search-and-Shopping slice that your query controls actually reach. The lesson carries over — for PMax, know what the network costs you even when you cannot switch it off, so the number informs how hard you lean on the controls you do have.
Fitting the SPN check into your routine
Because Search Partners is on by default and invisible in the search terms report, it is exactly the kind of leak that persists for months unless a routine catches it. Fold the network segment into whatever cadence you already run for query hygiene. If you review the search terms report weekly, glance at the network segment at the same time — it takes seconds once the view is set up, and a Search Partners line that starts drifting on cost per conversion is an early signal worth catching before a quarter of budget has gone to it. The check does not need to be frequent; it needs to be regular, because the default-on nature means the leak reappears on every new campaign you build.
The broader point is that traffic quality is not only a negative-keyword problem. Negatives handle the query surface on Google Search; the network toggle handles the surface your queries run on; and channel reporting handles the parts of Performance Max you cannot switch off. A serious wasted-spend hunt works all three, not just the one the search terms report makes easy. Search Partners is the piece most accounts skip, precisely because the report that trains their attention cannot show it — which is why it is so often where the quiet money goes.
Related reading
For the query-level side of the same problem, see the hidden wasted spend in your search terms and n-gram analysis for finding negatives. For the Performance Max angle where opting out is not an option, see the PMax search terms report and channel-level negatives and the PMax channel-field reporting change.