Guest post by James Scaggs, a Trada Optimizer
The Google Search Partner Network is defined by Google as “a group of search related websites where your ads can appear including search sites that partner with Google to show ads.” This typically represents sites such as AOL.com and Ask.com that haven’t built their own ad serving platform. This article will show you how to increase the ROI of your Adwords campaigns by segmenting this traffic and analyzing it separately.
The Problem
Unlike Display campaigns that use a placement report to show you which sites your ads are showing on, the Search Partner Network enabled campaigns don’t provide any transparency as to where your ads are actually being served. This is problematic primarily when Google adds new sites to the search partner network because CTR’s can drop through the floor, impressions soar, and conversion rates are all over the place.
Example of Search Partner Ads at Kayak.com (Served at the bottom of the page)
These ads can drastically inflate impressions and hurt overall CTR because they are served so low on the page.
Do Some Analysis
First of all you should take a look at how some of this Search Partner traffic as a whole is affecting your campaigns by adding the Top vs Other segment in the Adwords interface. In the example below you can see the dismal CTR for the Search Partners: Other traffic and how it is generating far more impressions than the rest of the traffic combined.
Next you should head over to your search term report to check if there are any crazy search terms coming through. Many times you will see some crazy terms that are coming from the Search Partner network and are simply scraped Title tags or headings of pages. Here is an example of something you might see:
Segment Campaigns
In order to keep this traffic from negatively affecting your campaigns and to better monitor the performance of the search partner traffic I recommend segmenting it into separate campaigns. While Google doesn’t allow you to create a campaign targeting ONLY search partner network there is a bidding strategy work around that will allow you to effectively segment this traffic.
The easiest way to do this is to duplicate your existing campaign in Adwords Editor and adjust your campaign settings and bids on the new Search Partner only campaign. Here is an example of how you could name your campaigns and set campaign settings to segment the search partner traffic.
Google Only Campaign
Product Line | Exact Match | Desktop & Tablet | Google Only
Network Setting: Set the Network targeting to Google Only and leave bids at normal amounts.
Bid Setting: Leave these settings at your current bid levels.
Search Partner Campaign
Product Line | Exact Match | Desktop & Tablet | Search Partners
This is simply a duplicate of campaign 1 with different network settings and bids.
Network Settings: Google Search and Search Partners.
Bid Settings: Reduce all keyword bids by 20% using an advanced bid change in Adwords Editor.
Conclusion
By segmenting your campaigns you can see a significant lift in overall CTR for you Google Only campaigns and thus reduce your overall CPC’s for those campaigns. Here is a look at the results of a recent segmentation that was done about 1 week ago.
Before the Segmentation
(Note* Campaigns were retitled to Google Only after the campaign segmentation but in this screenshot these campaigns still had Search Partner Traffic enabled)
After the Segmentation
The example above highlights the improvement in our Exact Match Tie Racks campaign. By segmenting the traffic out we are able to see a lift in CTR from 3.34% to 8.06% which correlates to a reduction in CPC from $.62 to $.58 while maintaining an average position of 1.5. This has allowed us to monitor conversions for each campaign separately and bid accordingly.
While the Search Partner network does drive lots of impressions and can bring in conversions it is still important to understand the impact it makes on your account performance so you can bid on that traffic accordingly. We hope this quick review encourages you to test out segmenting your campaigns for Search Partner traffic! Until next time, have fun segmenting!
James Scaggs is the Director of Marketing at Ties.com and Scarves.com based in Orange County, California, and a Trada Optimizer. Ties.com is the online leader in men’s ties and tie racks while Scarves.com offers a wide variety of women’s scarves.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Trada.
Correlation does not imply causation
Search Network stats do not affect Google Search in respects to QS, CPC, etc.
Hey David,
I think the main point is that it is generally accepted that Search Network CTR is significantly lower than Google Search and Search Network Impressions are incredibly higher. With that in mind it’s more difficult to troubleshoot QS and optimize CPC when both Search Network and Google Search are running in the same campaign so I suggest segmenting the campaigns so you can have a clearer view of your data and optimize your CPC’s according to a profit per impression metric. By segmenting in this way we have been able to lower our Search Network bids and allocate more dollars to our Google Search campaigns resulting in a higher Total Conversion Value and ROI across the board!
Best!
JS
I agree with David – the QS and CTR on Google.com are not affected by partners. Additionally, did the CTR really increase on Google Search or does the method agove just find a way to isolate what the CTR on Google Search was already when you had them running on both networks in the same campaign before?
Isolating traffic on partner networks is something we have long wanted to have as separate targeting features like in Bing but until that is available I’m not sure there is an effective way to manage them separately. What if keywords on the partner network run efficiently and they are bid up? If enough of them do, then we are back at square 1 as the bids are no longer 20% lower.
The point is to isolate the CTR by network so you can optimize separately. While it would be nice if Google provided a way to specifically target Google Only vs Search Partners the fact is they don’t and probably. Search partners do have some value and very well may deserve to be bid up which would put you back in square 1 but with all of the implementations of this strategy I’ve seen this has never been the case. The benefits of segmenting the campaigns come through better control over your bids and budgets in the Search Partner network where we simply don’t have as much data to help optimize.
I’ve set up a separate search partners campaign in the same method that you have explained above. However, the tricky part is when an adgroup in the search partners campaign is performing well but the same adgroup in the Google only campaign is doing poorly. Therefore, your inclination is to pause the Google only adgroup and keep the search partners adgroup runnning. However, this will cause your traffic to be messed up – you’ll be showing on Google from your search partners campaign but it a low position (since you’ve bid much lower). Has anyone figured out a way to deal with this issue?
CTR in meaningless without the corresponding conversion rate.
Let say I’m selling blue ties. I create an ad with the keyword ‘ties’. The Add title is ‘Blue Ties For Sale’. Gee, let’s change the add title to ‘Ties For Sale’ I just increased my CTR and probably lowered my conversion.
In many cases a higher CTR means a lower conversion percentage and higher CPA. Don’t assume higher CTR = more leads/conversions/sales per impression.