Many AdWords advertisers have been wishing that Google would provide a way to target only Google’s search partner networks (like Shopping.com and AOL Search), so that they can gauge the relative perfromance of Google and its partners.
Turns out there may be a way to do that now. Here’s how: The Site Exclusion Tool allows you to specify sites where you don’t want your Content ads to appear. Though the AdWords Help and the on-screen prompts imply this will only work for Content campaigns, the tool allows you to specify Search campaigns.
So, for example, if you want to test a campaign displaying ads only on the search partner networks and not on Google’s search network, exclude the site www.google.com.
We’ll be testing and reporting back – stay tuned, and let us know what you find if you test.
Update: Google says this is a user interface glitch, and it’s really not possible for a Search campaign to opt out of www.google.com or any of the other partner networks. Still, we’ll test and report back.
