Optimizing for Google Search Partners

What are Google Search Partners, anyway? Google Search Partners are comprised of a variety of properties, including Dogpile.com and Ask.com, as well as product sites like Amazon, Walmart, and Target (and many more).

When you set up your Google Ads Search campaigns, you have the option to add or remove Google Search Partners from search results relevant to your search terms. Our agency leaves this setting turned on for at least 60 days until we can evaluate the effectiveness of that group. If you overlooked that selection when you set up your account, don’t worry. You can always find the check box at the account level, under “settings,” and look for the “network” tab on either the “all campaigns”, “campaigns”, or the “ad group” level..

It’s relevant to note at this point that the effectiveness of Search Partners varies significantly from business vertical to business vertical—even business to business. So, please don’t make wide-sweeping decisions based on one campaign’s numbers.
After at least 60, days it’s time to evaluate this setting. At the campaign or ad group level find the “segment” button and click. The button is located mid-page on the right side of the screen.

Scroll down and select “Network (with search partners)

At Ad House Advertising, we like to evaluate the effectiveness based on the metrics of conversions, cost per conversion, all conversions, and cost per all conversions. Based on your campaign and ad goals, you may evaluate (say) on impressions and clicks and the cost per click.

If you’re focused on conversions, you should see your campaigns displayed something like this:

In this mature account, you can see that Search Partners actually performs better than the standard Google Search group. Take a look at the “Sg Services” campaign. The cost per direct conversion is just $14.39, while the Google Search group is $58.46. A win for Search Partners and the motivating factor for leaving Search Partners turned on. In the campaign “Sg Name,” the effect of Search Partners is negligible.

However, in this example, you can see that Search Partners has performed considerably worse, so the option in the Networks tab was turned off during our evaluation.

As always, do not make sweeping changes to your campaigns. Make one change, like Search Partner optimizations, wait to evaluate those results after 2 to 3 weeks, and move on to the next area you would like to evaluate. If you make more than one large change to your accounts, you won’t know which one affected the account.

Ad House Advertising is the digital advertising agency, part of Edit House Productions, LLC in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. We’ve been placing online campaigns since 2007 and have more than 30 years of media experience. While we enjoy providing helpful information, we neither guarantee nor warrant your individual results. These choices are up to you and only our suggestions for improvement. Company names used herein are the property of their respective owners.