Google removes free Shopping listings in Europe

Since mid-September, free Shopping results in Google have all but disappeared in the European Economic Area. The product carousels that used to appear at the top for searches like "buy running shoes" have been replaced by a block in which comparison shopping services take the lead. Paid Shopping ads are unchanged. If you run a webshop, you're losing free clicks — right in the weeks when end-of-year campaigns are being set up.

We checked this ourselves in Dutch search results and in client reporting. Below is exactly what changed, why it's happening and what we'd do.

What changed

Until recently, many product searches in Google showed two kinds of Shopping results: paid ads from Google Ads, and free product listings pulled from your Merchant Center feed. That second group — the "popular products" carousel and the organic product grid — delivered clicks without any advertising budget.

Those free listings have been removed in the EEA. In their place is a block where each row belongs to a comparison shopping service, showing products from that service's own listings. Google appears as just one row among the others. The Shopping tab has disappeared from the navigation and now sits behind "more products".

Outside the EEA — the UK, the US, the rest of the world — nothing has changed. That difference makes clear this isn't an algorithm update, it's regulation.

Why Google is doing this

This summer, the European Commission ruled that Google had been favouring its own services in search results over comparable services from others: more prominent placement, richer display, more filters. That falls under Article 6(5) of the Digital Markets Act. The ruling came with a deadline to fix it.

The new setup is Google's response. Instead of showing its own product listings more prominently than comparison services, Google now shows no free listings of its own at all, and approved comparison services get the space instead. Google itself calls it a degradation of search quality for European users, and is keeping the door open to appeal.

This is the latest chapter in a case that has run for almost twenty years, with earlier fines and lawsuits over exactly this issue. For you as a seller, the legal history matters less than the consequence: some of your free visibility now runs through an intermediary that often works on an affiliate basis.

What it means for your webshop

We're seeing three effects come back time and again:

1. Fewer direct organic clicks to product pages. Clicks that used to land on you straight from the carousel now go via a comparison service first. You'll see this in the free listings report in Merchant Center and in the share of organic traffic on your product pages.
2. An extra party in the chain. A comparison service working on commission chooses the display that works for it. That's not necessarily bad, but it is a link that costs money and that you don't control yourself.
3. Relatively more weight on paid. Because paid Shopping is unchanged, the share of your traffic that you pay for automatically grows. That's not advice to bid higher; it's a shift you need to factor into your calculations.

Where to see it in your own figures

Look at the period from around 16 September onwards and compare it with the four weeks before:

Only compare weeks with weeks, and take seasonality into account. Part of your drop may just be September.

What we'd do

Don't panic and double your budget. Do this instead, in this order:

• Measure the real loss first. Without numbers, you don't know whether you've lost one per cent or thirty per cent of your traffic, and so you don't know what a response is allowed to cost.
• Get your feed in order. Comparison services and the new display pull their information from the same feeds. Having titles, brand, GTIN, availability and price correct is worth more now than it was last month.
• Weigh up a CSS route on its merits. Working with a comparison shopping service can make sense, but calculate the commission and compare it with what a click costs you in Google Ads. Decide based on margin per order, not panic.
• Invest in the channels you own yourself. Your own category and product pages, email, repeat customers. Traffic that doesn't depend on a single gatekeeper becomes more valuable every year.
• Take AI discoverability seriously. More and more product questions start in AI assistants. That's no replacement for Google right now, but it's the first channel in years where the pecking order isn't fixed yet.

What we still don't know

Honestly: this is a week old. Whether the setup stays as it is, whether Google reverses course after an appeal, and whether comparison services manage to turn their new positions into actual sales — we don't know. What we do know is that your figures will show a break from now on, and you're better off explaining that break yourself than having someone discover it in December.

In short

Google has removed free Shopping results from search in the EEA to comply with a European ruling on favouring its own services. Paid Shopping stays as it is. Webshops are losing free clicks to comparison shopping services, right before Black Friday and Christmas. Measure what you've lost, get your feed in order, and only then calmly work out what a response is allowed to cost.

Want to know what this means for you, and what a sensible response looks like for the autumn? Book a free strategy session and we'll look through your figures together.