Many small retailers still believe Google Shopping is a paid service. It was for years: every product in the Shopping tab was an ad.
That changed last year. Google made listings in the Shopping tab free in the US in April 2020, and in Canada at the end of September. Paid Shopping ads are still present, at the top and in various places throughout the results, but the rest of the tab now displays products from stores that paid nothing to appear there.
Many small shops have not yet noticed this change, which is an advantage for those that have.
How do Google's free product listings work?
A person searches for "wool socks" or "maple syrup gift box", clicks the Shopping tab and sees a grid of products with photos, prices and store names. Clicking a product takes them to that product's page on the store's own website. Google takes no commission and charges nothing per click on free listings.
Products can also appear elsewhere on Google, such as in image results, depending on the options you have enabled. You do not control exactly where or when they appear: Google decides, based on the relevance and quality of your product data.
To appear at all, you need a Google Merchant Center account. The Google Merchant Center Help centre explains the setup step by step, and it is one of Google's clearest help sections. The steps are essentially as follows:
- Create a Merchant Center account and add your business information.
- Verify and claim your website, so Google knows the store belongs to you.
- Set up shipping and tax settings, and make sure your return policy and contact information appear on the site.
- Add your products, through a feed or a connection from your store platform.
- Opt in to free listings, then wait for Google to review the products.
Why is the product feed so important?
Because it represents most of the work. The signup takes an hour; the feed requires more effort.
A product feed is essentially a spreadsheet of your products that Google reads: title, description, link, image, price, availability, brand, and a few other fields depending on what you sell. Google matches searches to the contents of that feed. A title such as "Item 4471 blue" will not be found by anyone. A title such as "Women's merino wool hiking socks, blue, medium" matches the way people search.
Here is what to address before submitting anything:
- Titles written the way people search: product type, main feature, colour, size. Not your internal code.
- A genuine description, not one line copied from the supplier.
- A good main image on a plain background, with no text or watermark.
- Brand and product identifiers such as GTIN (the barcode number) where the product has one. If you make the product yourself and it has no barcode, there is a way to indicate this to Google.
- The correct product category, so Google does not show your candles to people looking for light bulbs.
If your store runs on Shopify, the Google channel builds and syncs the feed for you. WooCommerce has had an official Google Listings & Ads extension since June, which finally makes this straightforward on WordPress. On other platforms, you may need to build the feed in a spreadsheet and upload it. This method works for about twenty products; beyond that, automation becomes necessary.
Why are products disapproved or pulled?
Most often, because prices and stock do not match the website. Google crawls the product page and compares it to the feed. If the feed says $24 and the page says $29, or the feed says "in stock" and the page says "sold out", the product is flagged and can be pulled.
From Google's perspective, this rule is logical: nothing frustrates a shopper more than clicking a price and finding a different one on arrival.
The feed must therefore stay in sync. A sale on the site requires the feed to show the sale price as well. Selling the last unit at the Saturday market requires a stock update. This is the strongest argument for a store platform that syncs the feed automatically: keeping two lists current by hand is not sustainable over time.
Google also offers automatic item updates, which can correct price and availability in Merchant Center from the structured data on your product pages. This feature is useful, but it is a safety net, not a strategy. In addition, that structured data must first be present on your pages, which is part of basic technical SEO for any online store.
How can you use free listings before investing in Shopping ads?
As a no-cost test. This is how we recommend approaching them for a small shop.
Once products are live, Merchant Center shows clicks and impressions for your free listings. After a month or two, you can see which products actually attract clicks, which searches lead to them and whether those visits turn into sales on your site. This is real demand data, obtained at no cost beyond the setup.
Products that clearly attract attention are the ones worth investing in with Shopping ads. You approach paid advertising knowing what works, rather than experimenting with a budget. Proper Google Ads management is built on exactly this kind of information.
If no product is clicked, the information is equally useful: the titles, the photos or the price relative to other products on the page may be the cause. It is better to learn this at no cost.
Are free listings worthwhile for a small retailer?
For any business that sells physical products online, yes. There is no good reason to forgo them: this is free visibility in the very place where people are already looking for something to buy.
Expectations should nevertheless remain realistic. Free listings appear below the ads, large retailers have huge catalogues there, and Google's ranking cannot be manipulated. The result is a steady but modest flow of people who searched for exactly what you sell. For a small shop, that flow is valuable.
Here, then, is our summer recommendation for businesses with an online store: set aside a rainy afternoon to set up Merchant Center and add your ten best products. Then let it run for a month before analyzing the numbers.