Google announces free Google shopping listings again – soon

Some people will remember Google shopping listings being free. This all then became part of the paid search hemisphere. Google have again now announced that there will be some free Google shopping listings again.

Based on the announcement this was in the pipeline anyway but due to the pandemic Google are fast tracking this process. In the US this will happen before the end of April whilst the rest of the world will see this rolled out before the end of the year.

Google believe this will give consumers more options of retailers with extra retailers coming into the Google shopping realm with the free listings. This however will be a great benefit for those already using google shopping who will not need to spend any extra time managing this. Rather can open how shopping is used with the extra free listings on how much additional traffic they can get from here.

The full details of exactly how this will roll out and any tactical strategies Circus PPC are using to get the most of out of this for clients will be shared in a later blog however there are a few things that you do need to prepare in advance:

• A feed – if you haven’t been live on Google shopping for a while – you can do a lot more with a feed now than you could 5 years ago which help from a paid perspective but will also help from an organic perspective.
• Knowledge of which products are your best performing products which will work well on Google shopping vs the competitor listings.
• Be on top of any promotions you are running.

Circus PPC’s preferred feed management partner Shoptimised will help manage the paid for and free shopping listings. Shoptimised have been keeping an eye on the US shopping movements and have said:

“Not ‘All Shopping’ is free is from next week in the US.

Merchants selling in the US have already been picking up a small number of free shopping traffic for some time if they have opted-in to the ‘Surfaces across Google’. But this will increase next week and we currently estimate this change will make up to 10% of Google Shopping free.

Google Shopping is split into two main areas and a few more smaller areas. The main area and responsible for approximate 85% of all Google Shopping are these ads in the Search Tab, they will remain paid for. Later in the year when this launches in the UK, CSS discounts will still apply to these ads.

Then there is the Google Shopping tab. However, you may have also noticed they are testing Paid Ads in the Shopping tab too (in the US). This is why Google state: The Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free product listings.

There are also other places where you can pick up free/organic Shopping Traffic (only in the US) such as Google Images, Gmail & Display. You can also pick up Paid Google Shopping Traffic in those places too.

So, all in all, we expect up to 10% of what you currently pay for will become free in the US to begin with before making its way over to the UK and Europe later in the year.”

John Cave – Director at Shoptimised

Circus will continue to provide regular updates on this as and when the new announcements are released. In the UK nothing has changed for now and we will keep you all updated as and when they do.

For further information on Google shopping or the new announcements please do get in touch.