Google has virtually eliminated free product listings within Google Shopping for users in the EEA overnight. Tracking tools and industry experts are reporting declines of up to 100 percent for these formats in countries such as Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The reason for this shift is adaptation to the Digital Markets Act legislation, where the EU Commission requires that large platforms cannot favor their own services.
Instead of demoting its own listings, the search giant has chosen to remove them from general search results and cede the space to price comparison sites and other third-party actors.
Swedish E-commerce Businesses Lose – and Gain
Karl Lindberg at the agency Adrelevance has analyzed the effects of Google's restructuring. By studying data from just over one hundred Swedish e-commerce businesses, the agency found that clicks from Google's free product listings decreased by 67 percent from September 15th to September 21st, compared to the week before the change. At the same time, the number of impressions decreased by 44 percent. Despite this, the overall picture is not negative for e-commerce businesses.
It is interesting that total traffic is not decreasing, says Karl Lindberg.
Total clicks from Google are unchanged or up for all e-commerce businesses we have measured. We see this aggregated across just over one hundred Swedish e-commerce businesses in our Search Console data.
Visibility Shifts to New Formats
According to the agency's analysis, total organic traffic from Google has instead increased by 9 percent for the sites studied during the same period. At the same time, organic product results showing price, stock status, and ratings have increased by 87 percent compared to last year. Traffic is therefore not disappearing, but shifting between different formats in the search results. At the same time, more carousels leading to price comparison sites are now visible instead of directly to the e-commerce business.
Google is constantly changing how the search result looks, says Karl Lindberg.
The fact that Merchant Listings can drop by 67 percent while total organic Google traffic increases by 9 percent for our customers demonstrates the value of strong SEO work that creates visibility in all relevant formats. It also shows how important it is to be able to quickly adjust your strategy when conditions change in Google.
How the Industry Should Act
When the landscape of search results is redrawn, new priorities are needed for the industry. Karl Lindberg advises e-commerce businesses to initially focus on category pages, which are now getting more space, although product pages can also gain increased visibility depending on the site's specific strategy.
It will also be central to monitor the different search formats separately in analytics tools, as free listings can fall sharply. In addition, e-commerce businesses should map price comparison sites to understand how their own business is affected, and carefully monitor their paid advertising to see how the shift in free traffic affects ad formats such as Shopping Ads and Performance Max.