A campaign setting that lets Performance Max advertisers switch off Google's Search Partner Network and Google Display Network surfaced again in October 2026, still carrying an "Alpha" label almost six months after it was first seen in a Dutch-language account. PPC News Feed reported the sighting on October 19, 2026, in a post titled "Partners" Setting for Performance Max, crediting a LinkedIn observation by Natasha Kaurra. Google has published no help page, blog post or announcement describing the control.

In Short

Google has a type of ad campaign called Performance Max that decides on its own where ads appear, including on websites and apps that Google does not own. Some advertisers have spotted a box that lets them stop ads from running on those outside sites, but Google is only testing it with a small group and has not explained it publicly. If it becomes available to everyone, advertisers would get a simple on-off switch for two places their money currently goes by default.

What the October interface shows

According to PPC News Feed, Google Ads is testing a new setting called "Partners" in Performance Max, "previously known from Search campaigns, offering advertisers more control." The post describes "two independent options within the settings: 'Search Partners' and 'Google Display Network.'" Both, according to PPC News Feed, "allow advertisers to choose where their ads appear on third-party sites and apps or across the broader web, respectively."

The interface shared in Kaurra's post places the panel in campaign settings, directly below the EU political ads question and above "More settings." The section is titled "Partners," followed by a small "ALPHA" tag, and the instruction line reads: "Choose which partners you want your ads to run on."

Two checkboxes follow. The first, "Search partners," carries the description: "Search partners includes ads that appear within search results on third-party websites and apps when they're relevant to a user's search." The second, "Google Display Network," reads: "The Google Display Network includes visually engaging ads on relevant websites and apps that reach users as they browse across the web."

In the campaign shown, Search partners is ticked and the Google Display Network box is empty. That detail is easy to over-read. Nothing in the post says whether the advertiser unticked Display or whether the box arrived empty. When the control first appeared in April, both boxes were checked by default, which suggested Google had left existing delivery untouched. A single account cannot establish that the default has changed.

PPC News Feed's description of the setting as something "previously known from Search campaigns" is a reference to the network settings that Search campaigns have offered for years. There, advertisers can include or exclude search partners and the Display Network at the campaign level. Performance Max, by design, has never offered that choice. Its inventory spans Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, with Google deciding the split.

The LinkedIn post that PPC News Feed links to carries a post identifier that decodes to October 13, 2026, by PPC Land's calculation, which would place Kaurra's observation six days before the PPC News Feed write-up. Neither post says which market the account was in or how long the setting had been visible.

How the wording has changed since April

The October sighting is not the first. Adriaan Dekker shared an earlier version on LinkedIn on April 30, 2026, crediting Renaldo Spin with finding it, and PPC Land reported on May 3 that a "Partners" control had appeared under "Other settings," below Locations and Languages. That version was labelled "Partners Alfa," likely the Dutch spelling of alpha, and the translated instruction read: "Choose which partners you want to run your advertisements with."

The descriptions in April were shorter and leaned on scale. Search partners was described as "hundreds of non-Google websites," and the Google Display Network as "more than 2 million websites and apps." The October version drops both figures and replaces them with functional definitions: search results on third-party sites for the first, ads shown to people "as they browse across the web" for the second.

Three things differ, then: the language of the interface (English rather than Dutch), the copy beneath each checkbox, and the panel's position on the page, which now sits next to the EU political ads question. The alpha label has not changed. Whether the new wording points to a wider test, a different build, or simply a different interface language is not something either post addresses.

What Google has and has not said

The only public statement from Google about the control came through Digiday in July. A Google spokesperson described it as "a pilot with a limited group of advertisers" and declined to say when broader availability might follow, as PPC Land reported on July 28, 2026. Buyers at three agencies told Digiday that Google representatives had turned down their requests for access. Brian Pappas of Moroch said his agency received access in the final week of June 2026.

Since then, there has been no documentation. No help center article describes the Partners setting. No Google Ads API field for it has been announced. No date has been given for general availability, and Google has not said how many advertisers are in the test or how they were chosen.

Several practical questions therefore remain open. It is not known whether unticking Search partners in Performance Max removes all search partner traffic, or whether some partner placements could still arrive through other inventory types. It is not known how the setting interacts with Performance Max's channel and placement reports. It is also not known whether unticking a network changes the campaign's bidding behaviour or learning, a point Google has not addressed for this control.

A second, overlapping control

The October sighting arrived five days after Google announced a different, generally available way to limit the same two networks. On October 14, 2026, Google introduced channel prioritization and budget allocation controls, with a progressive rollout from October 15. In Performance Max, the controls treat Google's own surfaces as one group, "Google channels," and let advertisers set search partners and the Google Display Network separately to high or low priority. Low-priority channels can then be given a daily spending cap expressed as a percentage of the campaign's average daily budget.

Google's help page describes that cap as best effort, stating that it "isn't a guarantee" and that spend may occasionally exceed it. Two days later, Google Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin wrote in the Ads Decoded newsletter that advertisers will be able to set the search partner allocation in Performance Max to 0%. "On PMax, you'll be able to set a budget allocation for SPN to 0% if desired," she wrote. Her answer did not say whether the best-effort caveat applies to a 0% setting.

The two mechanisms are not the same. A 0% allocation requires marking a channel low priority first and then relies on a spending target that Google calls best effort. The Partners checkboxes, as they appear in the interface, are a plain inclusion or exclusion, much like the network settings in Search campaigns. Google has not explained why it is testing both, whether the alpha will be folded into the channel prioritization system, or whether one will replace the other.

Why the networks matter to advertisers

Control over the Search Partner Network has been one of the longest-running requests from paid search practitioners. Search partners are third-party sites and apps that show Google search ads, and the Google Display Network covers a far larger pool of websites and apps showing image and other formats. In standard Search Network campaigns both can be switched off; in Performance Max, until this test, they could not.

Google has moved gradually on transparency for partner inventory. In August 2025 it made full placement reporting available for the Search Partner Network across Search, Shopping and App campaigns, showing site-level impressions. In February 2026, PPC Land reported that Google had ended parked domains as an ad surface in the Search Partner Network, effective February 10, 2026. Reporting, however, only shows where money went after the fact. An opt-out decides it in advance.

For advertisers who already exclude search partners and Display in their Search campaigns, Performance Max has been the gap: the same networks could receive budget through a campaign type that offered no switch. The alpha closes that gap for the accounts in it. For everyone else, the October 14 controls offer a cap rather than a switch, with Google's own documentation describing that cap as something its systems "aim" to respect.

What remains unknown

The October sighting establishes that the Partners control still exists, that it is still labelled alpha, and that its interface copy has been rewritten in at least one English-language account since April. It does not establish a wider rollout, a change in defaults, or a release date. Google had not, as of October 19, documented the setting anywhere, and the only official characterisation remains the July description of a pilot with a limited group of advertisers.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google Ads, Performance Max advertisers in a limited alpha test, PPC News Feed, which reported the sighting, and Natasha Kaurra, whose LinkedIn post it credits.

What: A "Partners" setting in Performance Max campaign settings, labelled alpha, with separate checkboxes for Search partners and the Google Display Network, now shown with rewritten English descriptions. Google has published no documentation for it.

When: PPC News Feed reported it on October 19, 2026. The control was first seen on April 30, 2026, and Google called it a limited pilot in July 2026.

Where: In the Google Ads interface, in Performance Max campaign settings, below the EU political ads question.

Why: Performance Max has not let advertisers exclude search partners or the Display Network, while Search campaigns have. The test would give a direct switch, alongside the best-effort percentage caps Google announced on October 14, 2026.