Google Ended Parked-Domain Ads on Search Partners: What to Audit Next

On February 10, 2026, Google stopped serving ads on parked domains through its Search Partner Network. It is a real cleanup of one of the network's most criticized corners, but parked domains were never the only low-quality inventory your search budget could reach. This article explains exactly what changed, where the remaining risk sits in Search Partners, Performance Max and Display, and gives you a step-by-step audit to run this week.

What Google changed on the Search Partner Network in February 2026

Google's Search Partner Network announcements page states in its February 2026 entry that parked domains, served through AdSense for Domains (AFD), "will cease to be an ad surface within the search partners network effective 10 February 2026." The content suitability option that let advertisers include parked domains was removed at the same time, automatically, for every account.

A parked domain is a web address that someone has bought but not developed. It usually shows little or no content apart from lists of related search terms, and clicking those terms loads sponsored results. Search Engine Roundtable's report on the AFD shutdown describes this as the final phase of a plan Google began a year earlier, and PPC Land's coverage of the parked-domain removal notes that no advertiser action was required.

How we got here

• October 2024: new Google Ads accounts started out excluded from parked domains by default, according to Search Engine Land's report on the default parked-domain opt-out.
• March 19, 2025: Google began opting all existing accounts out of parked domains by default. Advertisers could still opt back in through content suitability settings.
• August 2025: full placement reporting for the Search Partner Network arrived for Search, Shopping and App campaigns.
• January 2026: Performance Max channel reporting gained a Search Partner segment for all accounts, and account-level placement exclusions began rolling out.
• February 10, 2026: parked domains were removed as an ad surface entirely.

The pressure behind these changes goes back years. In November 2023, TechCrunch reported on an Adalytics investigation that found Google search ads on more than 2,200 domains that appeared to be linked to piracy and about 390 sites that appeared to host pornographic content. Google disputed the report and called it inaccurate, but the transparency requests from advertisers never went away.

What parked-domain removal does not fix

Taking parked domains out of the Search Partner Network removes one type of inventory. It does not change how the rest of the network works, and it does not touch Display. Three exposures remain.

The rest of the Search Partner Network

Search partners are, in Google's definition of search partners, sites that partner with Google to show ads, reaching "hundreds of non-Google websites." Quality varies widely. Some are established publishers and retail sites, while others are thin search pages that exist mostly to monetize queries. Google argues the network pays off: its December 2025 announcement says advertisers with at least 5% of spend on search partners using Smart Bidding can expect an 11% uplift in conversions, or 7% in conversion value, in campaigns that are not limited by budget. That is Google's average. Your account may look quite different, and the only way to know is to check.

Performance Max, where you cannot switch Search Partners off

Standard Search campaigns let you untick search partners in network settings. Performance Max does not. As ALM Corp's analysis of Performance Max Search Partner placements puts it, you "cannot disable the entire inventory category"; the only control is excluding placements one at a time. That makes Performance Max the main place where search-partner traffic now enters accounts that have otherwise opted out.

Display, YouTube and Demand Gen placements

Parked domains and search partners are search inventory. Display Network, YouTube and Demand Gen placements (which Performance Max also uses) were never part of this change. Low-quality apps and made-for-advertising sites remain a risk there, and they call for their own exclusion work.

New Search Partner Network placement reporting and its limits

You can see far more of the network than you could two years ago, but the data has gaps you need to understand before acting on it.

• Search, Shopping and App campaigns: Search Engine Land's report on Search Partner placement visibility (August 2025) confirmed site-level reporting for these campaign types. Google's help page on Search Partner Network placement reporting says the report shows placements and impressions only, and includes a placement only if it had five or more impressions, or at least one click, video view or conversion, in the selected date range.
• Performance Max: the channel performance report shows Search Partners as its own segment, and from February 2026 the "When and where ads showed" report lists individual Search Partner domains. ALM Corp notes that cost is still combined into a single Search Partner line rather than broken out by domain, and no placement data is available from before the feature was switched on.

In practice, you can see where your ads appeared and how often, but not which domain produced which clicks, costs or conversions. A domain with thousands of impressions could be your best partner or your worst, and the report alone will not tell you which. PPC Land's coverage of the August 2025 reporting launch quotes one practitioner summing it up: "it's the PMax version: impression data only."

Account-level placement exclusion lists

The second new tool is a single exclusion list that applies across the account. PPC Land's report on account-level placement exclusions (January 2026) says the list applies across Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube and Display campaigns. Before this, advertisers had to set exclusions campaign by campaign. Google's help page on account-level exclusions says these exclusions also cover the Search Partner Network and are managed through content suitability settings in the Tools menu.

Keep three limits in mind:

• Exact matching only. PPC Land reports there is no wildcard or pattern matching, so each domain has to be listed. Country-specific versions of a domain need separate entries.
• Uneven rollout. In January 2026 the feature was still reaching accounts gradually, so check whether yours has it before planning around it.
• Exclusions are reactive. A list only blocks domains you already know about. New low-quality sites keep appearing, so the list needs regular review.

A step-by-step Search Partner Network audit checklist

Use this checklist for every account you manage. Most steps take less than an hour, and the first three are worth doing now even if you plan to keep search partners switched on.

1. Inventory your exposure. List every campaign by type and note which ones can reach search partners. Search campaigns with the search partners box ticked, Shopping and App campaigns, and every Performance Max campaign belong on the list.
2. Segment performance by network. For Search campaigns, segment by network and compare search partners with Google Search on cost per acquisition, conversion rate and downstream quality (qualified leads, not only form fills). For Performance Max, use the channel performance report.
3. Pull the placement reports. Export the Search Partner placement list for Search, Shopping and App campaigns, and the "When and where ads showed" list for Performance Max. Sort by impressions.
4. Triage the domains. Visit the top domains by impressions and mark anything that is a thin search page, irrelevant to your audience, unsafe for your brand, or has a pattern of lookalike domains.
5. Build or update the account-level exclusion list. Add every domain you marked. Because matching is exact, include known variants. Record the date and reason for each entry so the list stays easy to audit.
6. Check Display, YouTube and Demand Gen separately. Review placement reports there too, paying particular attention to mobile apps and made-for-advertising sites. Add confirmed problems to the same list.
7. Tag traffic so you can see it on your site. Make sure every campaign has consistent UTM parameters so on-site analytics can split visits by campaign and network. The Ðeny UTM builder helps keep naming consistent across a team.
8. Compare ad clicks with on-site behavior. Look for sessions with very short time on site, no scrolling or interaction, data-center or proxy IP addresses, or visitors outside your targeted countries. These are signs of invalid traffic (IVT) that platform reports will not show you by domain.
9. Decide per campaign, with evidence. If search-partner traffic converts at a cost you can accept and passes on-site quality checks, keep it and keep excluding the bad domains. If it does not, turn search partners off in Search campaigns and rely on exclusions for Performance Max.
10. Request credits and repeat monthly. Check Google's invalid-click adjustments against your own data, raise disputes where the numbers differ, and schedule the audit to repeat every month.

Closing the impression-only gap with on-site traffic classification

Google's new reports tell you where ads appeared. They do not tell you who, or what, arrived on your site after the click. That question matters more each year: last month we wrote about $63B in invalid traffic and the IPIDEA residential proxy takedown, which showed how easily bot traffic can pass for real visitors on consumer IP addresses.

Ðeny fills that gap on your site, where the click actually lands. It classifies every visit in real time as Clean, Good Bot, Residential Proxy, IVT or Out-of-Geo, and its UTM Breakdown shows that mix for each channel. You can see whether the search-partner share of a Performance Max campaign is sending real visitors or noise, even though Google reports only impressions by domain. Ðeny Bot Shield can then block invalid visits before they fire your conversion tags and feed bad signals back into Smart Bidding. The Ðeny features overview explains how each part works.

Conclusion: a cleaner network still needs checking

Removing parked domains is a real improvement, and the new placement reports and account-level exclusion lists give paid search managers controls they have asked for over many years. But Performance Max still sends traffic to search partners you cannot switch off, the reports show impressions rather than cost by domain, and Display inventory was never part of this change. Run the audit, build your exclusion list, and check each click against what actually happens on your site.

Want to see how your paid traffic breaks down by channel? Request a Ðeny demo and we will show you the Clean, IVT and Residential Proxy split for your own campaigns.