Search Partners are a scam you're opted into by default

The most expensive checkbox in Google Ads is on by default.

When you create a new campaign, Google quietly opts you into the Search Partner network. One checkbox. Ticked. Spending your budget on places that aren't google.com.

Most people never uncheck it.

What the Search Partner network actually is

Google will tell you it includes sites like Ask.com and other "search engines." What they won't tell you is that it also includes parked domains, low-quality directories, and content farms that technically have a search bar somewhere on the page.

There's no placement report. You can't see where your ads ran. You just see "Google Search Partners" as an aggregate line item and hope for the best.

In B2B industrial, this is a disaster. Your procurement engineer is not searching for an arc flash label on a third-party spam directory. They're on google.com. That's it.

The math

Pull your campaign performance segmented by network. Look at "Search Partners" vs "Google Search."

You'll see one of two things:

1. Search Partners are spending real budget at a meaningfully worse conversion rate
2. Search Partners are "converting" at a suspiciously high rate that doesn't match your Salesforce data

Both are bad. Scenario 1 is wasted budget. Scenario 2 is bot traffic or low-quality spam form fills that look like conversions but close at 0%.

I've audited about thirty B2B accounts over the years. Search Partners outperform Google Search in maybe one of them. And that account was an outlier.

The fix

Campaign Settings. Networks. Uncheck "Include Google search partners."

Do it across every campaign in your MCC. Takes about ten minutes.

If you want to be methodical about it:

1. Pull last 90 days segmented by network
2. Compare conversion rate and CPA between Google Search and Search Partners
3. If Search Partners are at 2x+ the CPA, turn them off immediately
4. If you can't tell because the conversion numbers are too small, turn them off anyway

Low volume means no data. No data means no optimization. No optimization means wasted budget.

The argument for keeping them

"Google says it lowers overall CPA."

It does lower CPA when it generates cheap conversions. Cheap conversions that don't close. So your CPL drops and your cost per closed deal stays the same or gets worse.

Google optimizes for what it can measure. It measures conversions. It cannot measure whether those conversions actually turned into revenue for you six months later.

Search Partners generate cheap, low-intent conversions that make Google's dashboard look better. That's the feature. It's not a bug they're trying to fix.

The action

Go uncheck the box right now. It's in Campaign Settings under Networks. Do every campaign. Takes minutes. Save thousands.

If you want to test it properly first: clone a campaign, turn off Search Partners in the clone, run both for 30 days, compare closed-won outcomes. The answer will be obvious.

Then turn them off everywhere.