Google Ads Search Partners Network Fraud

I am seeing a spike in complaints from the PPC community around there being an increase in fraudulent traffic from the Google Ads Search Partner network. Many have seen an unusual spike in fraud from that network in the past week, say some advertisers.

The Google Search Network is a group of search-related websites and apps where your ads can appear. When you advertise on the Google Search Network, your ad can show near search results when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.

Jon Kagan posted about this concern on X, he wrote, “we’re seeing an abnormally high amount of fraudulent and suspected fraudulent traffic in the search partner network this year in
Google Ads.” He then asked if others are seeing the same.

And yes, others are.

Harrison Jack Hepp responded saying:

Had this for a client earlier this year. It has been running fine with partners enabled. The out of nowhere tons of spam leads and huge spikes in traffic from partners.

Menachem Ani responded saying:

We’ve been seeing a huge influx of spam leads across many clients

Ben Kruger responded saying:

Yep saw this a few weeks ago and shut it off

Jim responded:

For lead generation, I’ve been turning off search partner network more and more. Even when optimizing towards lower level conversion actions, it isn’t working. I think it’s been like this at least a year.

Google has not responded about these concerns, at least, not that I’ve seen by the time I wrote this.

Here are those posts:

We hardly ever use search partners. On the surface it looks like that network does well but the leads are almost all junk. #ppcchat

— Melissa L Mackey (@beyondthepaid) September 12, 2024

Samesies

— Jon Kagan (@JonKagan) September 12, 2024

We’ve been seeing a huge influx of spam leads across many clients

— Menachem Ani – Google Ads 🎯 (@MenachemAni) September 12, 2024

Yep saw this a few weeks ago and shut it off

— Ben Kruger (@Ben__Kruger) September 12, 2024

For lead generation, I’ve been turning off search partner network more and more. Even when optimizing towards lower level conversion actions, it isn’t working. I think it’s been like this at least a year.

— Jim – PPC Lead Generation with HubSpot & Zapier (@JimLeadGen) September 12, 2024

Forum discussion at X.