Performance Max Search Partner Reporting: Read the Right Report

Start with the Search partners row in the channel report

A Performance Max campaign can look healthy in total while one channel deserves attention. The channel performance report is where to look first, because it is the report that carries results. Select the campaign and the period, and the table lists each channel with impressions, clicks, interactions, conversions, conversion value, cost, results, and results value. Search partners is one of the seven rows.

Two filters change what the rows mean. Ads using product data isolates the Shopping ads served from a Merchant Center feed; ads using video isolates video formats. Neither is a channel, so a row filtered to product data is a subset of a channel, not a rival to it. Note which filters and which conversion actions were applied before you export, or two exports will disagree for no reason.

Check the conversion definition before you read the cost per conversion. A form submission and a qualified opportunity are different outcomes; if the campaign optimizes to submissions, a low cost per conversion on the Search partners row says nothing about what sales received. Record the goals and the period next to the export so the comparison holds still.

Read the result before reaching for a control

Compare the Search partners row with an earlier period that makes sense for the business, and allow for conversion delay on the most recent days. Small numbers deserve care: a handful of late conversions can move a channel's cost per conversion by half.

Look at the campaign total too. A shift in channel mix can be worth understanding without the campaign getting worse, and a healthy total does not answer a specific complaint about lead quality or an unsuitable site.

Check what changed around the time the row moved: budgets, bid targets, conversion goals, assets, landing pages, product availability. Each is a candidate explanation to test against the timeline, and the report's status column may already name a delivery issue for the channel.

For lead generation, find out whether the account receives the downstream conversion actions the business cares about. If qualified-lead outcomes exist only at campaign level, say so in the review, and leave them at campaign level. Spreading them across channels or across sites by impression share manufactures precision the data does not have.

The next step follows the finding. A broken conversion import is a measurement repair. An unsuitable site is a suitability decision. A channel that is genuinely expensive for the conversions it produces is a reason to look at the levers below, none of which is a channel switch.

Use the placement report for the question it answers

The Performance Max placement report lists placements and impressions. Google says plainly that it is not a comprehensive campaign performance report and positions it for brand safety review. It does not have a campaign filter, so it shows placements across the account's Performance Max campaigns for the period.

Use it to check where the ads ran. Sort by impressions to decide what to inspect, judge each placement against the advertiser's suitability policy, and record the placement, the period, and the finding. A high impression count is a reason to look, not a finding about cost.

Keep the two conclusions separate when both are present. The Search partners channel may warrant investigation because its measured results changed. A particular site may warrant exclusion because it conflicts with policy. Both can be true in the same week without the site being the cause of the change.

The controls Performance Max actually has

Performance Max has no per-channel budget and no checkbox that turns Search partners off. What it has is a set of account-level and campaign-level controls that shape delivery. These are the ones Google documents.

Match the control to the finding. A site that fails the suitability policy is an account-level placement exclusion, which also removes it from Display and video delivery. A pattern of irrelevant searches is a negative keyword, which touches Search and Shopping inventory and nothing else. A channel whose results are poor is not something any of these controls turns off; the honest response is to look at assets, conversion tracking, and search themes, and to say in the review that channel share is not directly adjustable.

Account-level exclusions and shared lists reach beyond the campaign you started with. Inspect their current contents before editing, keep a copy of the previous state, and after the change confirm the setting saved at the intended level. Watch the next period with enough time for conversions to mature; a before-and-after movement is a prompt for the next question, not a measurement of the exclusion.

If the concern is invalid traffic rather than suitability, Google's Invalid Activity Credit Report and its investigation route are the path. That evidence is at campaign and network level and should stay separate from the placement list.