What is the search network?

What is the search network?

The search network includes Bing.com (and sites owned and operated by Bing, such as MSN.com, Bing.de and Bing.co.uk), AOL.com (including sites owned and operated by AOL) and Yahoo.com (including sites owned and operated by Yahoo). The search network also includes other third party websites, owned and operated by Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s syndicated search partners.

Both search ads and Microsoft Audience Ads are distributed on the search network. Audience ads are currently available to only a limited number of customers and will be shown only on select websites such as MSN. If audience ads are available for your campaign, you can manage your use of these ads and their bids using the audience ads bid adjustment on both the campaign and ad group settings pages.

Within the search network, you can narrow your ad distribution if needed: you can display your search ads on all sites in the search network; just Bing, AOL and Yahoo owned and operated websites; or just the syndicated search partner sites. For more information, go to our Traffic Quality Center and click Ad placement.

When you run the Website URL (publisher) report (available on the Reports page), you'll see websites based on these ad distribution rules. To learn how ad language and location targeting affects who sees your ads, see How does ad language and location targeting affect who can see my ads? The Website URL report is a great tool for determining how well your ad is doing on search network sites. From this report, you'll see how often your ad displays on different sites; this can help you determine which sites are beneficial and which are not. You can then use the Exclusions feature to exclude specific sites from search ad distribution. To learn more, see How to prevent your ads from showing to certain people.