PMax Finally Gets Network Controls: The Partners Alpha, Explained

Performance Max network controls are finally real — in alpha, at least. Google is testing a new “Partners” setting that lets PMax advertisers independently opt in or out of the Search Partner Network and the Google Display Network, a control the campaign type has never offered since it launched in November 2021. Until now, both networks were bundled into every PMax campaign, take it or leave it.

The stakes are straightforward. For nearly five years, the only way to exclude Search Partners or Display placements from a PMax strategy was to abandon PMax entirely and rebuild in standard Search and Display campaigns, where network settings already exist. Advertisers have asked for this control loudly and repeatedly — the absence of granular network controls has ranked among the most persistent PMax complaints from search marketers, per TechWyse, and Google’s own help community carries a long-standing unresolved thread asking exactly this question.

This guide covers what the Partners alpha actually changes, the timeline of PMax transparency and control features that led here, the separate June 15 product-reporting expansion that is currently masquerading as a performance spike in July dashboards, and what advertisers should do this week — whether or not their account is in the alpha.

As first reported by Search Engine Land on July 15, 2026, Google is alpha-testing a new setting inside Performance Max — labelled “Partners (Alfa)” in the test interface — that exposes two independent checkboxes: one for the Search Partner Network and one for the Google Display Network. Search Engine Land credits PPC growth strategist Saquib Syed with first spotting and sharing the feature on LinkedIn.

Per the alpha UI screenshots shared by testers, the toggle sits in the campaign’s Other settings area, below Locations and Languages. Both checkboxes arrive enabled by default, which means current PMax behavior is completely unchanged unless an advertiser actively opts out of one or both networks. Google has announced no timeline for a wider rollout beyond the current limited alpha.

Performance Max launched in November 2021 with a deliberate design premise: one campaign, every Google surface, no inventory restrictions. Per Google’s own documentation, a single PMax campaign spans Google Search, the Search Partner Network, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Maps — seven surfaces from one budget, with the automation deciding where money flows.

That premise created a control asymmetry advertisers have resented ever since. Standard Search campaigns let you uncheck “Include Google search partners” in Networks settings. Standard Display campaigns are, by definition, opt-in. PMax offered neither: Search Partners and GDN were both included automatically, with no way to exclude either individually. The demand for this control is not hypothetical — Google’s advertiser community carries an open, unresolved thread titled “How do I choose network settings in performance max campaigns?” If you are weighing PMax against segmented campaign types on the control question, our Performance Max campaign guide walks the full trade-off.

The Partners alpha did not appear from nowhere. It is the latest step in a sequence of transparency and control features that no single announcement has stitched together. Reporting visibility came first — the Placement report has listed Search Partner sites since at least 2024, and industry coverage through 2025 tracked Google expanding channel-level and search-terms reporting. Actual controls only began arriving in 2026, starting with account-level placement exclusions on January 14, 2026 — a single centralized block-list applying across Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube, and Display, first noticed by Google Ads specialist Aleksejus Podpruginas.

The distinction matters. Placement exclusions address individual sites, apps, and YouTube channels — a brand-safety instrument, the same family of control as PMax brand-safe text guidelines. The Partners alpha is materially different: it switches an entire network on or off. The table below assembles the full sequence — something no single existing source has done.

Read chronologically, the pattern is unambiguous: Google spent the first years of PMax letting advertisers see more, and only in 2026 began letting them change anything. Every row in the bundled era is a window; both meaningful 2026 entries before the alpha are still either a placement-level scalpel or a measurement change. The Partners alpha is the first row where the answer in the final column flips to yes.

Adjacent in the news cycle — but entirely unrelated to the Partners alpha — is a second PMax change that is actively confusing July reporting. Per Search Engine Roundtable, on June 15, 2026, Google Ads expanded Performance Max product-level reporting to use data from all PMax networks, rather than the narrower Search plus Standard Shopping subset it previously pulled from. The change was spotted by PPC specialist Bia Camargo, who posted about it on LinkedIn on July 16 — a month after it actually took effect.

The practical trap: an ecommerce advertiser comparing July product-level metrics against May or early June will see impressions and clicks jump and be tempted to credit creative, bidding, or seasonality. Camargo’s advice, via Search Engine Roundtable, is the right operational fix — use the “Network (with search partners)” filter to isolate the reporting-scope change from genuine performance shifts, and add a footnote to any month-on-month benchmarking that crosses the June 15 cutover.

There is a useful connection to the Partners alpha, though: the expanded product reporting means advertisers now have fuller network-inclusive data on where PMax product ads actually serve. If and when the Partners toggle reaches general availability, that data is exactly what an opt-out decision should be based on.

Four situations, four moves. None of them requires waiting for Google.

Whichever bucket you are in, the underlying discipline is the same one we apply in our paid media engagements: change one variable, measure against a baseline, and never let a platform-side reporting change masquerade as a performance result. The same test-design thinking applies to PMax asset experiments — network toggles just become one more variable in the matrix.

The trend line here is bigger than one checkbox. PMax launched on the premise that advertisers should trust the automation and stop restricting inventory — Google’s documentation still frames the format as maximizing performance “without restricting where your ads appear.” Testing a network opt-out, however quietly, is a tacit admission that blanket inclusion was never right for every advertiser. It follows the same arc as every other PMax concession: search-terms visibility, channel reporting, placement exclusions — each one a control Google initially argued the automation made unnecessary. Search Engine Land has separately argued advertisers should opt out of Search Partners in standard Search campaigns on quality grounds; the alpha extends that debate, for the first time, into PMax itself.

Projecting forward: alphas do not guarantee launches, and Google has shipped nothing resembling a timeline. But the direction of travel across 2026 — placement exclusions in January, all-network product reporting in June, a network toggle in test by July — points toward a PMax that behaves less like a black box and more like a configurable campaign type. If the toggle reaches general availability, expect defaults to stay on and the burden of proof to stay with the advertiser: the automation-first economics of PMax, which we unpack in how PMax bidding automation actually works, give Google every incentive to keep inventory broad unless advertisers actively choose otherwise. The winners will be teams that already know — from their own placement and network-segmented data — exactly which boxes they would uncheck.