Search Partners Network: Turn Off or Leave On? The Complete Guide for 2026

Almost every Google Ads campaign is set up by default to show ads on both Google Search and the Search Partners network. Many advertisers accept this setting without giving it a second thought. Yet this is one of the most impactful, and simultaneously most underestimated, settings in your campaign configuration. The question is not simply "turn it off or leave it on?" but rather: when does the Search Partners network work in your favour, and when does it quietly drain your budget? In this article we fully dissect the network, provide concrete guidance per business type, and show how AdBrains AI makes this decision automatically every day based on hard data.

What exactly is the Search Partners network?

The Search Partners network is a collection of websites outside of Google.com that offer a search function and display Google ads within it. Think of major news sites with an internal search bar, comparison platforms, directories, and other websites that integrate search ads through a partnership with Google. When someone searches on one of these partner sites for a term matching your keywords, your ad can appear there, just as it would on Google.com itself.

In practice, this means your reach can increase substantially without adding extra keywords. Google reports the Search Partners network as a separate row in your campaign statistics when you segment by "Network (with search partners)". This is a crucial insight that many advertisers miss: the data is available, but you need to actively look for it to understand what the network actually contributes.

What distinguishes the network from Display or YouTube advertising is user intent. On the Search Partners network, someone is actively searching for something, just as on Google.com. This makes the quality of the traffic theoretically comparable to regular search traffic, though in practice there are important nuances that determine whether the network pays off for your specific situation.

When does the Search Partners network deliver returns?

Average CPA ratio Search Partners vs. Google Search

Industry benchmarks 2026 — lower index = more efficient

E-commerce (courses/digital)

82

E-commerce (physical products)

91

Lead gen (installation/services)

74

Lead gen (financial/insurance)

108

B2B SaaS

117

Whether to activate the Search Partners network depends heavily on your industry, your objectives, and the maturity of your campaigns. Based on industry benchmarks for 2026, clear patterns are visible. For e-commerce businesses in the online courses and digital products market, such as ToetsJeKennis.nl, Search Partners tend to perform exceptionally well on average. Users searching on comparison sites or educational portals for "exam training" or "online accounting course" are in exactly the same purchase phase as when they perform the same search on Google.com.

For lead gen campaigns in the installation market, we see similarly positive results. Clima-Active.nl, which offers air conditioning and heat pump installations, benefits from the fact that people on energy-related comparison sites and home improvement platforms are actively looking for installers. Intent is high, competition on those partner platforms is often lower than on Google.com itself, and this translates directly into a lower cost per lead.

Situations in which the Search Partners network typically delivers returns:

• High purchase-intent keywords where the user is actively seeking a solution regardless of platform.
• Niche products or services where the target audience consults specific platforms alongside Google.com.
• Campaigns with limited search volume on Google.com, where additional reach via partners is valuable.
• Sectors with relatively low competition on partner platforms, resulting in lower CPCs.
• Brand awareness-focused Search campaigns where extra impressions increase top-of-mind awareness.

When are Search Partners a budget drain?

There are also clear scenarios where the Search Partners network systematically underperforms. In sectors such as B2B SaaS, financial services, and insurance, CPA figures on Search Partners are on average higher than on Google.com itself. The explanation is multi-layered: the quality of traffic differs subtly, landing page relevance is sometimes lower in a partner context, and the user may be in a different mindset on a partner site than on Google.com.

As a general rule of thumb: the higher your ad budget and the tighter your CPA targets, the more critical you need to be about network performance. A campaign with a Target CPA of €15 that achieves €13 on Google.com but €22 on Search Partners is structurally losing money on the partner portion. This may seem like a small deviation, but at scale it represents significant budget waste that directly undermines your returns.

AdBrains AI: daily network optimisation without manual effort

Search Partners: manual management vs. AdBrains AI

What makes the difference in daily practice?

Manual management

• One setting for all campaigns
• No visibility into partner-specific CPA
• Periodic manual check (monthly)
• Risk of wasted budget on poor partners
• No automated segmentation

AdBrains AIAI-driven

• Analysed individually per campaign
• Daily CPA and ROAS monitoring per network
• Automatically toggled on/off based on data
• Budget protected via threshold values
• Multi-agent verification for every change

Manual analysis of the Search Partners network is time-consuming and in practice is rarely carried out systematically. Most agencies and advertisers check this at best monthly, meaning suboptimal situations persist for weeks or months before action is taken. AdBrains has fundamentally changed this by fully automating network management through our own proprietary AI technology.

Our AI analyses the performance of the Search Partners network relative to Google Search on a daily basis, per campaign. Based on pre-configured thresholds for CPA, ROAS, and conversion volume, the system automatically determines whether Search Partners should remain active or be switched off. This is not a simple rule based on a single metric: the AI weighs multiple signals simultaneously, including recent conversion volume to ensure statistical reliability, the trend over the past seven days, and relative performance compared to the Google Search component of the same campaign.

Every change the AI intends to make is first validated by our multi-agent verification system. Four independent AI agents assess the proposed optimisation before it is executed. This prevents a statistical noise event, such as a temporary conversion spike or a measurement error in conversion tracking, from leading to an unnecessary change in campaign settings.

For clients like ToetsJeKennis.nl, this means in practice that the AI has detected Search Partners consistently delivering lower CPAs for campaigns around specific exam categories, and keeps this setting active. At the same time, for campaigns targeting more generic terms where partner data shows a higher CPA, the network is automatically disabled without the account manager needing to take manual action.

For Clima-Active.nl, the AI additionally analyses the seasonality of Search Partners performance. During periods of high heat pump demand, such as early spring, partners consistently perform better because energy-related comparison platforms attract more visitors. The AI detects this pattern and optimises the setting proactively, before CPA data would prompt manual intervention.

The server-side signal enrichment that AdBrains deploys via our own sGTM infrastructure also plays a role here: because conversion signals are enriched with first-party data, Google's Smart Bidding guidance is more accurate, and the AI can draw more reliable conclusions about the actual value of Search Partners conversions.

Overview: Search Partners on or off per campaign type

The table above is a guideline, not an absolute rule. Every campaign deserves its own analysis based on actual data. Use the table as a starting point for your evaluation, not as a final verdict.

Practical steps to evaluate the Search Partners network

Search Partners by the numbers — industry benchmarks 2026

Positive effects with proper management

+18%

Extra impressions on average when enabling Search Partners

74

Average CPA index lead gen (Search vs. Partners)

+12%

CTR improvement after excluding poor partner segments

3x

Faster optimisation with AI vs. manual network management

Ready to assess your own Search Partners performance? Below is a concrete step-by-step plan you can apply directly in your Google Ads account, suitable for both experienced advertisers and marketers who want to go deeper on this topic.

1. Step 1 — Collect data: Set your reporting period to at least ninety days to draw statistically reliable conclusions. Short periods introduce too much noise.
2. Step 2 — Segment by network: Use the segmentation function in Google Ads to split performance per campaign between Google Search and Search Partners.
3. Step 3 — Compare CPA and ROAS: Note the difference in CPA or ROAS between both networks per campaign. If the gap is greater than fifteen percent in a negative direction for Search Partners, disabling it is a serious option.
4. Step 4 — Check conversion volume: If the Search Partners segment has fewer than twenty conversions in the analysis period, wait longer before drawing a final conclusion or weight the data less heavily.
5. Step 5 — Decide per campaign: Enable or disable Search Partners individually per campaign. Do not apply a blanket account-wide decision.
6. Step 6 — Re-evaluate every quarter: Partner network performance can change due to seasonality, new partner sites, or shifts in search behaviour. Schedule a quarterly review.

This step-by-step plan gives you a solid foundation for manual evaluation. If you want to fully automate this process and run it daily rather than quarterly, the AI-driven approach of AdBrains is the logical next step.

Frequently asked questions about the Search Partners network

Can I exclude specific Search Partner websites?

No, Google currently does not offer functionality to exclude or target individual partner websites within the Search Partners network. It is an all-or-nothing choice at campaign level. This is one of the main limitations of the network and a key reason why overall network performance is so important to monitor. If aggregated data shows insufficient returns, disabling the network is the only available option.

Does the Search Partners network affect my Quality Score?

Quality Score is primarily calculated by Google based on performance on Google.com itself. Performance on the Search Partners network is therefore not directly factored in. A lower CTR on partners could theoretically influence overall account health through historical data, but this is an indirect and limited effect. There is no need to fear disabling the network for campaigns that perform poorly on it.

Does the Search Partners network work differently in Performance Max campaigns?

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns have their own network logic and are not directly comparable to traditional Search campaigns. PMax automatically distributes across multiple channels including Search, Display, YouTube, and Shopping. The Search Partners network is also available within PMax, but control is even more limited than in regular Search campaigns. For PMax, network segmentation is also possible via reports, but the optimisation options per network are minimal.

Should I enable Search Partners when I am just starting with Google Ads?

For beginners, it is generally advisable to leave the network active and evaluate performance after the first ninety days using network segmentation. Google's default setting is "including Search Partners," and for many sectors this delivers additional reach without extra cost per click. Once your campaigns have accumulated sufficient conversion data, it is time to analyse the network split and make a targeted decision. A considered approach to your werkwijze is essential: do not blindly follow default settings, but actively evaluate them.

What is the effect of the Search Partners network on my Smart Bidding strategy?

Smart Bidding theoretically accounts for the probability of conversion per network when setting bids. In practice, transparency about this is limited. For campaigns with sufficient conversion volume, more than fifty conversions per month, Smart Bidding is able to optimise bids on Search Partners. At lower volumes, manual or AI-driven network management is more effective than blindly trusting the automatic bidding logic. This is precisely why AdBrains' automatic tCPA and tROAS optimisation complements the built-in Smart Bidding mechanisms of Google.