Brand Safety Considerations And Google’s Search Partner Network

Google’s Search Partner Network is included by default on most search campaigns, and most advertisers running it have no idea where the money actually lands. A 2026 finding about programmatic inventory on X (formerly Twitter) shows the blind spot hasn’t closed.

Most search campaigns run with a setting most advertisers have never consciously reviewed: Google Search Partners, a network of third-party sites and platforms bundled into standard Search and Performance Max campaigns by default. It’s a real placement inventory with real brand safety implications, and it’s opted in unless someone deliberately opts it out.

What the Search Partner Network actually is

Google’s Search Partner Network (SPN, sometimes referenced as GSP) extends search ad delivery beyond Google’s own results pages to a network of thousands of partner sites and services. It’s bundled by default into most Search and Performance Max campaign types, with a pre-filled checkbox that most advertisers never uncheck. Google offers advertisers a spend breakdown between Search and SPN in aggregate, but historically has not provided a site-level breakdown of exactly where SPN spend lands, which is the core of the transparency complaint.

What the original brand safety research found

Independent ad-tech research firm Adalytics published a 2023 report estimating SPN generates roughly $10.5 billion annually and alleging the network included placements on pornographic, piracy and sanctioned-entity sites, in some documented cases on domains advertisers had specifically added to their own exclusion lists years earlier. Google disputed the scale of the findings but responded by giving advertisers the ability to exclude the Search Partner Network from campaigns entirely, an option that previously required digging through account settings most advertisers didn’t know to look for.

What made the original report land as hard as it did wasn’t just the specific sites named, it was that Search and Search Partner Network spend weren’t reported separately by default, and Google Search and SPN inventory aren’t Media Ratings Council accredited for brand safety the way most premium display and video inventory now is. Advertisers were, in effect, being asked to trust a network with genuine reach and genuine revenue at stake without the independent verification standard most other channels had already adopted as table stakes.

Why this is still a live issue, not settled history

The 2023 findings could be read as a moment that got fixed and moved past. A specific development from January 2026 argues otherwise: martech consultant Jonathan D’Souza-Rauto documented that a substantial share of the ad auctions on X (formerly Twitter) are now available programmatically, with Google Ads serving as a primary buyer of that inventory through Search Partners, Video Partners, and Display Network extensions on Performance Max, Demand Gen and Display campaigns. Brands with explicit policies against advertising on X can end up buying inventory there anyway, indirectly, through a Google Ads account they assumed was compliant with that policy, often because the cheap CPMs available on that inventory get favoured by automated optimisation. Third-party pre-screening tools for SPN inventory, including a product DoubleVerify launched in May 2025 specifically for this network, exist precisely because Google’s own settings don’t close this gap on their own.

What to actually check in your own account

Three things worth confirming directly rather than assuming: whether Search Partners is currently enabled on active campaigns, whether it’s enabled by default on new campaign creation (it typically is), and whether any current brand exclusion policy, X (formerly Twitter) included, has a technical control behind it in the ad account itself rather than existing only as a stated internal policy nobody’s actually verified against delivery data.