Why Google Shopping Opening Up Free Product Listings is Huge for Retailers and Consumers

Google has taken a gigantic shift towards competing with Amazon.

Google announced that they are going to roll out free listings on Google’s Shopping search. With the COVID-19 Pandemic, Google is trying to help brick and mortar retailers sell their products online. 

Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google stated:

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings. If you’re an existing user of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you don’t have to do anything to take advantage of the free listings, and for new users of Merchant Center, we’ll continue working to streamline the onboarding process over the coming weeks and months.” 

This is a win for both sellers and consumers. For retailers that already have items in stock and ready to ship are going to see big upsides with this update if they take action. When consumers go to the Shopping tab on Google, they will see ads at the top and bottom of the page (similar to the “All” search tab). The new update will help increase visibility and it is still important to run Google Shopping Ads for products that are competitive online to help stand out amongst the rest. 

PayPal Partnership/Integration 

Google has partnered with PayPal to help users link their accounts in the onboarding process so creating an account runs smoothly. This helps google with the verification process to make sure they have trusted merchants in their system. Google will pull seller information from PayPal to help speed up the process. Google stated that they will be sharing more information about the onboarding process in the next few weeks and even months. 

How To Set Up Free Google Product Listings

For existing users of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you may already be able to show your products in the free listings if you already set up surfaces across Google. 

1. In order to opt in the program, you will need to sign into the Google Merchant Center and then select “Growth” and then “Manage programs” and then you should be able to select “surfaces across Google.” 
2. The next step would be to create products in your feed. You can do this via a plug in or manually enter the shopping values in a sheet.

For those that are new to Google Merchant Center, you will need to sign up for one. You will need to go through the same process as listed above by selecting the “surfaces across Google” program and then create your product feed. Google is going to be releasing more information about the onboarding process in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Google is currently working on a reporting system where you can see your unpaid clicks from Google’s Shopping. 

Optimize Your Organic Product Listings With Today’s Business 

This new Google Shopping Update allows for increased efforts for SEO strategists and e-commerce marketers as they will be able to now optimize for organic product search. Optimizing organic product search is very important for any retailer’s business as it increases visibility for people that are looking for your products online. If you are a retailer and have inventory saved up, getting your products on Google and optimizing them should be part of your SEO strategy. At Today’s Business, we have the SEO experience and knowledge needed to help implement SEO tactics to boost your business to the next level. Contact us today to discuss different SEO strategies that can help you organically enhance your business impact and gain more customers.

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