Search Partner Sites in Your AdWords Campaign

A box that is ticked by default

Every AdWords search campaign has a setting that decides whether its ads appear only on Google or also on Google's search partners. Unless somebody unticks the box, partners are included.

Most small advertisers never look at it again. Partner clicks come out of the same budget as Google clicks, and the campaign totals add the two together.

That is fine if the partner clicks behave like the Google ones. Sometimes they do. Often nobody knows, because the report that separates them is two clicks away and nobody has made them.

What a search partner is

Google shows its search ads on hundreds of other websites with search boxes of their own: other search engines, large directories, some retailers and publishers, and some of Google's own sites beyond the main results page.

When someone searches there with words that match your keywords, your ad can appear, and a click costs you money just as it would on Google.

You cannot choose which partner sites carry your ads, and the reports do not name them. There is no separate bid either. It is all of them or none, decided campaign by campaign.

Seeing the two sets of clicks apart

In the Campaigns tab, open the Segment menu and choose Network (with search partners). Each campaign splits into a row for Google search and a row for search partners.

Use at least three months of figures, or a whole season for a seasonal business, since partner volumes are often small. Then compare the two rows:

• Clicks and cost, to see what share of the budget partners take.
• Click-through rate, which varies widely between partner sites and means little alone.
• Average cost per click, which can be lower on partners without being cheaper.
• Conversions, the orders, forms and calls the campaign records.
• Cost per conversion, what each of those results actually cost.
• What visitors did on the site, from Analytics, if the accounts are linked.

The fifth settles the question. Cheap clicks that never become an order cost more per order than pricier clicks that do, and only cost per conversion shows which is which.

The comparison needs conversion tracking

All of this assumes the campaign records what happened after the click: an order placed, a form sent, a call made from the ad.

Without that, the only figures are clicks and cost, and cheaper clicks always look like the better deal. That is how partner traffic survives in accounts where it has never produced a customer.

If tracking is missing, setting it up comes first. Until it is in place, a linked Analytics account can at least show whether partner visitors read more than one page.

Why partner visitors behave differently

Someone searching on Google is usually looking for a business, a product or an answer. On a partner site the search is often narrower: a phone number in a directory, or a search inside a site already open.

The partner sites also differ from each other in how many ads they show and where they put them. Across hundreds of them, the quality of the clicks varies more than it does on Google.

None of that makes partner traffic bad. It makes it a different audience, one that deserves its own figures.

A worked example

A magic and novelty shop on an older commercial street sells magic sets, juggling gear, gag gifts and costume pieces, and ships some of them from a small online store.

It runs two AdWords campaigns. One advertises the online store across Canada; the other reaches people within a short drive who are looking for a shop to visit.

Neither campaign's network setting had changed since it was created. When spending crept up over the winter, the person who manages the account split both campaigns by network for the previous six months.

In the online store campaign, partner clicks had produced orders at a cost close to Google's. Partners stayed on.

In the local campaign, partner clicks took a noticeable share of the budget, brought almost no calls and mostly left after one page. Partners were switched off there, and only there.

The difference was the kind of search each campaign relied on. People look for products on shopping and directory sites as well as on Google. A search for a shop to visit nearby happens mostly on Google itself.

Switching partners off, one campaign at a time

The setting is in each campaign's Settings tab, under Networks. Untick Include search partners and save; the change applies from then on, and past figures stay in the reports.

Decide campaign by campaign, as the shop did. A local campaign and a product campaign can reasonably reach opposite answers, and an account-wide rule gets one of them wrong.

Shopping campaigns have a partner setting of their own, and the same comparison applies. Note the date of each change so that next season's figures make sense against it.

When partners are worth keeping

When their cost per conversion is close to Google's or lower, partners add customers you would not otherwise reach. There is nothing to gain by switching them off on principle.

When the searches are few, in a small market or a narrow specialty, partners can help a campaign spend a budget that Google alone cannot.

And a new campaign with no conversion history can start with the default, then be judged on its figures after a few months.

After that, once a season is often enough. Weekly decisions on a handful of partner clicks only chase noise.

The counter-case

In a small account spending a few dollars a day, partner clicks may be too few for the comparison to mean anything. There, keywords, ad wording and the landing page matter far more than this box.

Some businesses find their best customers through partner sites, and switching partners off without looking would cut good clicks along with poor ones.

For everyone else the advice holds: split the report by network, judge partners on cost per conversion, and decide one campaign at a time.

The network split

1. Confirm conversion tracking works for orders, forms and calls.
2. Segment each campaign by network, with search partners.
3. Use at least three months of figures.
4. Compare cost per conversion for the two rows.
5. Untick search partners where they do not pay.
6. Note the date of every change.
7. Review the split again next season.

Step four is the decision itself. Click prices and click rates describe the traffic; cost per conversion describes what the traffic did for the business.

Where the ads now sit on Google's own results page is covered in no more ads down the right of Google.

Frequently asked questions

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