Placements & Networks
Search Network
By the AdFlint research team · Last reviewed July 2026
Text ads that appear on Google's own search results pages alongside organic listings when someone types a matching query.
Ads enter an auction triggered by the user's query and rank on bid combined with Quality Score, so relevance changes what you actually pay. You reach for it when demand already exists and people are searching for the thing you sell. The common mistake is leaving Search Partners and Display expansion enabled by default, then blaming Search for the resulting traffic quality.
Search Network compared with
The settings this gets confused with, and how to tell them apart.
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