22nd April 2020

Google Shopping opens up free product listings

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Louise Burgess
Board Director
Read time: 5min
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Listing products on Google’s shopping service page is about to become free. In a recent announcement, the tech giant Google has said they are planning to allow advertisers of all sizes to promote their products on Google Shopping without any media charges. This is significant news especially for brands who already are or want to test promoting their products via Google Shopping with no risk. To begin with this is only available in the US with support for other countries expected to start later this year.

With ‘Direct to Consumer’ a rapidly growing sector right now, this is a compelling way for Google to compete with the likes of Amazon. However, there are some caveats that are important to consider when assessing the size and scale of this opportunity.

According to Bloomberg, Google will still sell Shopping ads, which will give merchants the option to appear in paid slots above the free listings. Product ads will also continue to appear on the main Google search results page, but only for paid ads, while the free listings will only show up in the less-popular Shopping search tab. This means there will be minimal disruption to existing Google Shopping Paid ads and strategies however it will see an increase in the number of products available to browse, a definite win for the consumer!

Google are making it easy for merchants of all sizes to list their products, not least via the PayPal integration where Merchants who already use PayPal can process payments directly for Google Shopping sales. Another great benefit currently being tested in the US is a facility that allows the Google Merchant feed to be uploaded directly to Google in real-time. This means that rather than just adding schema mark-up to the site, all the information displayed is accurate at the time of search. This includes ratings, price, availability, etc. So it is more important than ever to ensure your product pages are optimised for Google to display the right information to the right user.

If you don’t have a Google Merchant Center account setup or need support in optimising your website please get in touch. We’d love to help!

 

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Author Louise Burgess
Channel SEM