Google Shopping · focused work
Google free product listings
Google shows products from Merchant Center in places nobody bids for: the Shopping tab, image results, Lens results and parts of the main search page. There is no auction and no cost per click. What decides whether a store's items appear is whether the account is opted in, whether each product passes review, and whether the data is complete enough for Google to match it to a query.
This is the right work if
- Products are already in Merchant Center for paid campaigns but nobody checked the unpaid programme setting
- The Shopping tab shows competing retailers for the store's own products and not the store itself
- A large share of the catalog sits disapproved and nobody separates paid from unpaid eligibility
- Titles were written for a category page rather than for how shoppers search for the item
What it is
What the free listings work covers
The work makes a catalog eligible for the unpaid surfaces and then keeps it there. Eligibility has three parts. The account must be opted in to the free listings programme and have accepted its terms. The website must be verified and claimed, with the business information, shipping settings and returns policy filled in, because incomplete account level settings can hold back an entire catalog rather than a single item. And each product must pass review, which means the same policy and data standards that apply to paid product ads.
After that it becomes a data quality exercise. Unpaid placements have no bid to compensate for a thin record, so the products that appear are the ones described well enough to be matched confidently: a title that names the item the way people search for it, a category and product type that place it correctly, an identifier, an image that meets the image requirements, and a price and availability that agree with the landing page. The last part of the work is measurement, since free listing traffic is reported inside Merchant Center and lands in analytics as organic traffic that is easy to mistake for ordinary search.
How it is done
The work, in order
What changes
- The store's products appear on the unpaid Shopping surfaces alongside the paid ones
- Disapprovals are worked by revenue at stake instead of by list order
- Product records carry the attributes that decide where an item can be shown
- Unpaid product traffic is reported separately rather than folded into organic search
Confirm the account is eligible
Check that the website is verified and claimed, that the free listings programme is active in the account, and that business information, shipping and returns settings are complete. Account level gaps suppress the whole catalog, so these are checked before any individual product is investigated.
Clear the disapprovals
Work through item level issues in order of the revenue behind them rather than in the order they are listed. Fix the underlying cause in the store or the feed rather than editing a value in the interface, because an override that the next feed run replaces has fixed nothing.
Raise the data quality on every item
Complete the attributes that decide matching: title, description, brand, identifier, product category and product type, condition, and images that meet the requirements without promotional text over them. Missing recommended attributes will not disapprove an item, but they reduce where it can appear.
Keep price and availability current
Set the feed to update at a frequency that matches how quickly stock and prices move, and turn on the automatic updates that let Google read those two fields from the page. A price that disagrees with the landing page is the fastest route back to a disapproval.
Extend coverage where the store qualifies
Add the additional data the unpaid surfaces can use where it applies, such as promotions, sale prices with valid dates, and local inventory for stores with physical locations. Each one adds a place the product can be shown without adding a cost per click.
Report the unpaid traffic on its own
Read the free listings performance figures in Merchant Center and build a matching view in analytics so the sessions and revenue arriving from those surfaces are visible next to paid Shopping. Without it, gains from this work are invisible and get attributed to something else.
Platform notes
Shopify
The Google and YouTube channel syncs the catalog and exposes the programme settings, but the products published to it depend on the channel's own publishing rules, so an item live on the site is not automatically an item in the feed.
WooCommerce
Feed plugins vary in which attributes they map by default, and identifiers, condition and product category are the fields most often left empty, which is exactly the data the unpaid surfaces rely on.
Do free listings require any advertising spend?
No. The unpaid surfaces are open to any merchant with a compliant Merchant Center account and product data that passes review. Many stores run paid campaigns as well, and the two draw on the same product data, but neither one is a condition of the other.
Why would an item be approved for ads but not appear in the unpaid surfaces?
Approval and appearance are different things. An item can be eligible and still rarely show, because unpaid placements are matched on relevance and data completeness with no bid to lean on. Thin titles, missing identifiers and vague categories are the usual reasons an approved item stays invisible.
How long after fixing a product does it start showing?
The item has to be re-fetched and reviewed, which happens on the feed's own schedule, then it becomes eligible again. Expect this in days rather than hours, and check the item's status rather than searching for the product manually, since what you see is personalised.
Does taking part require a comparison shopping service in some regions?
Arrangements differ by country, and in parts of Europe paid product ads are served through a comparison shopping service while the unpaid surfaces have their own participation rules. Check the current requirements for each country the store sells into before assuming one setup covers all of them.
Related work and answers
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