Recently, Hannah, a Google AdWords community manager posted the following question on the AdWords discussion forum:
Is the ranking of PLAs on Google search different to the ranking of products on Google shopping pages?
This question was answered by Kat, a Google employee:
In some circumstances, you may notice differences in how your products are serving or ranking on Google with PLAs versus Google Shopping. For example, you may see your items showing/ranking on the former but not showing/ranking on the latter. This behavior may happen, and could vary, based on several factors. Reasons why this may happen can include:
- The available real estate is different between the two properties. On Google.com, there is less space to show PLAs while the Shopping property has more space.
- The auction dynamics can be different between the two properties and, as such, the results may also be slightly different.
- For some queries, Google Shopping may present results via a catalog (specific product page) instead of individual merchant listings while Google does not display these catalogs.
Improvements are continually being made to the system and, over time, these improvements can help further unify the results between the two properties but, on occasion, differences between results may be seen.
