I am seeing a spike in complaints from the PPC community around there being an increase in fraudulent traffic from the Google Ads Search Partner network. Many have seen an unusual spike in fraud from that network in the past week, say some advertisers.
The Google Search Network is a group of search-related websites and apps where your ads can appear. When you advertise on the Google Search Network, your ad can show near search results when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.
Jon Kagan posted about this concern on X, he wrote, “we’re seeing an abnormally high amount of fraudulent and suspected fraudulent traffic in the search partner network this year in
Google Ads.” He then asked if others are seeing the same.
And yes, others are.
Harrison Jack Hepp responded saying:
Had this for a client earlier this year. It has been running fine with partners enabled. The out of nowhere tons of spam leads and huge spikes in traffic from partners.
Menachem Ani responded saying:
We’ve been seeing a huge influx of spam leads across many clients
Ben Kruger responded saying:
