Free product listings on the Google Shopping tab
Great news in the field of online retail: since the end of April you can present your product listings for free on the Google Shopping tab in the United States. Later this year, this option will become available in other countries as well. The product listings will not be visible via the general Google search result page, unlike the standard Shopping ads.
Why free product listings?
For sellers it means that they’ll get free access to the millions of people who use the Google Shopping tab each day to compare products. Google hopes that this will increase its product range, making it easier to entice searching shoppers to use the Shopping tab.
For users it means an even greater choice and the ability to compare more products. Many experts believe that this is a response by Google that is aimed at competing with Amazon. Google previously introduced Shopping Actions, where you can buy products directly on Google. Shopping Actions is also only available in a limited number of countries for now, such as the U.S. and France.
What do the free product listings look like?
On your desktop the free product listings will look the same as the product ads. On your mobile device they may look different. This depends on the product category. Clothing and furniture are depicted larger than electronics, for example
Source: Search engine land
What do you have to do to be visible for free?
If you’re already advertising via Google Shopping, you basically don’t have to do anything extra to be eligible for the free product listings. If you’re not yet advertising via Google Shopping, you’ll first need to create a Google Merchant Center account and then upload your product data. After you have done that, don’t forget to sign up for “Surfaces across Google” in the Merchant Center.
For advertisers who currently only advertise part of their product offering, this is a unique opportunity to add their entire product range in order to generate additional traffic.
How can you measure the results of your free product listings?
In the Merchant Center you can see how many clicks you have received via organic (free) and paid product listings. However, if you want to see the results of the clicks, such as conversion and turnover data, you’ll need to use Google Analytics. By default, the clicks from the free product listings are grouped under all of the other organic traffic.
If you specifically want to consult the results of the free product listings, you’ll need to add tracking parameters to your URLs. Are you using Adchieve? Then you can easily do this by pasting the following UTM after your product link:
An important additional remark is that auto tagging must be enabled in Google Ads and that the “manual override” checkbox in Google Analytics must be unchecked.
Need help or advice in adding feeds with the right tracking? Don’t hesitate to contact our consultants!
