Google Announces Free Google Shopping Listings

Last month Google announced they were launching free Google Shopping tab listings to help struggling merchants during the coronavirus pandemic, which has now been officially rolled out to the UK.

There are currently 2 main parts to the Google Shopping offering:

1. The first is the top position in the search results pages (SERPs) where there is usually a carousel showing all the relevant product listings related to your search. These are commonly known as Product Listing Ads (PLAs – see first image below). The product placements here are bid driven and generally, the way to rank here is through bid optimisation. These results are not changing and will remain paid for, so are not part of the free listings.
2. The second channel within Google Shopping is the Shopping results tab which we understand has far less traffic than the SERPs pages. The actual splits of traffic are never divulged, and Google keeps this as a very closely guarded secret. There is a suggestion that a PPC based carousel will appear at the top and bottom of the shopping tab results, however, all the content in-between will be free.

Retailers can continue showing their paid ads above these new organic listings, and Onefeed have been working with our clients to take advantage of this new feature, including optimising feeds and creating bespoke reporting methods.