Google Ads Location Targeting [Explained]
- Country, city, neighbourhood, and radius options
- Presence vs presence or interest settings
- Choose the right targeting level for your campaign
Watch the step-by-step walkthrough below, then follow the guide to turn off the Search Partners network in your campaign settings so your ads run on Google Search only.
Follow these steps alongside the video to remove Search Partners from your campaign targeting.
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Common questions about Search Partners in Google Ads.
Search Partners are websites and apps that partner with Google to show search ads. They include sites like YouTube, Google Maps, Google Shopping, and hundreds of third-party search engines and directories. When Search Partners is enabled, your ads can appear on these sites in addition to Google Search — giving you broader reach but often at lower conversion rates than Google Search itself.
Many advertisers disable Search Partners to reduce wasted spend. Traffic from partner sites often converts at a lower rate than Google Search, and you have less control over where your ads appear. Disabling it focuses your budget entirely on Google Search — which typically delivers higher-quality leads and sales. You can always re-enable it later once you have enough data to make a performance comparison.
Yes. In Google Ads, go to Campaigns → Insights & Reports → Predefined reports → Basic → Network to see a breakdown of impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost split between Google Search and Search Partners. This is the best way to evaluate whether Search Partners is contributing meaningfully to your results before disabling it.
The Search Partners setting is at the campaign level. This means you need to disable it separately for each campaign where you don't want Search Partners. You cannot turn it off globally for the whole account in a single setting, so if you manage multiple search campaigns, you'll need to repeat the process for each one.
No. Quality Score in Google Ads is calculated based solely on performance on Google Search, not on Search Partners. Disabling Search Partners will not hurt your Quality Score or your ad's eligibility to show on Google Search.
No. Unlike the Display Network, Google Ads does not offer a separate bid adjustment for Search Partners — it's an all-or-nothing toggle. Your only options are to include or exclude Search Partners entirely. If partner traffic is underperforming, the recommended approach is to disable it and reallocate budget to Google Search.
More step-by-step guides to get more from your Google Ads campaigns.
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