Google Search Partners & Lead Quality: A Cautionary Tale
Full disclosure: I did not plan on writing this article. Something happened. Then it happened again. Then again. And at that point I thought, “This needs to be written about.”
Prior to these happenings, I must admit, I hadn’t paid Google’s Search Partner network much mind. I would segment campaign results every so often to see how it performed, and never had a significant issue.
Then, in the course of two months, I personally witnessed 3 different Google Ads accounts, totally different companies, experience the following: unexplained spikes in lead conversions, combined with precipitous drops in lead quality. In other words, in each case there was a major influx of junk leads.
There are some patterns. In each scenario, the advertiser was a B2B tech company, generating leads at an average of about one a day. Each had recently shifted to a smart bidding strategy, such as Maximize Conversions, or started using the “experiment” functionality. And then, BOOM, out of the blue, a 5X+ increase in leads. Here’s what it looked like, roughly…
5X Increase in Leads!
Champagne-popping trajectory. Unfortunately, not real.
The initial euphoria was short-lived. As soon as you looked at those leads, you realized they were absolute garbage. Name: XYZ. Email: blahblah@mailinator.com. And interestingly, each one was unique in a way that made you suspect it was humans at work, vs. bots. Web server logs were checked, and no suspicious traffic was identified. Strange. We scratched our heads.
It took a bit, about 24 hours, for us to dig into the network segment of Google Ads and see, ooooooh, every single one of these conversions came in on the Search Partner network.
Looking under the hood, Search Partners were the culprit. In this particular case, conversions spiked every time we ran an experiment in the account. Hmmmmmm.
Now, we weren’t the only ones to experience this, of course. I did some digging, found a Google Ads community post on the topic. I’ve captured the gist of it…
Note that she starts by mentioning “invalid clicks”, but moves on to stating the real problem: “invalid conversions” and “unqualified leads”. The community expert responds, “There is no benefit for anyone to do so [create fake conversions] in Search.” But is that really true?
Let’s step back for a moment. What exactly is the Search Partner network? Google is vague about it…
“Sites in the Search Network that partner with Google to show ads and free product listings. Search partners extend the reach of Google Search ads and listings to hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as YouTube and other Google sites.
On search partners sites, your ads and listings can appear on search results pages, site directory pages, or other pages related to a person's search.”
OK, so why would you become a Google Search Partner? Why not partner with Bing, or Duck Duck Go? Well, I think it’s fairly obvious that money is involved. According to this Search Engine Journal article, Search Partners “receive a share of the advertising profits.”
Here’s where I start to develop conspiratorial suspicions. Are there Search Partners that are compensated for “conversions”, and would an unscrupulous Partner try to game the system, and feed bogus leads into the Google Ads network to make some extra cash? Not outside the realm of possibility. (I’ve seen some crazy stuff. Affiliate programs, anyone?)
Shutting off Search Partners in the campaign settings immediately solved the issue, of course. Lead numbers dropped back down; lead quality improved and stabilized. We sighed and continued the work of building real, sustainable improvement.
This is all a long way of saying: if you haven’t been watching your Search Partner traffic and monitoring your lead quality, it’s time to start.
