How to Take Advantage of Free Product Listings on Google Shopping

eCommerce and Google Shopping

As mentioned in our previous article about Google Ads credits, while online sales have been rising steadily over the past several years, the coronavirus lockdown has accelerated this shift – now is the time to push hard and capture market share.

Starting late last week, Google has added the ability to add free listings on Google Shopping. If your business has already been paying for Product Listing Ads, you will be able to augment your campaigns with free listings.

For new users, Google is pledging to streamline the onboarding process over these next few weeks and months.

Google will also launch a new partnership with PayPal so that merchants will be able to link their accounts. Plus, Google plans to work closely with partners like Shopify and BigCommerce to help make eCommerce more accessible.

My understanding is that the Shopping tab only sees about 15% of overall Shopping traffic. Aside from the sponsored listings on the page, the rest of the traffic in the Shopping tab will be free.

What You Need to Know

If you’re wondering how to take advantage of these recent developments from Google, here’s what you need to know:

Q. How Do I Participate in Google’s Free Listings?
A. If you’re a current user who’s already opted into the surfaces across Google program, just log-in to your Merchant Center account, and select “Growth” and “Manage programs” in the navigation menu on the left. You’ll be able to add more products to your product feed so that these can be found in the free listings.

Q. How Do I Sign Up to Be a New User of Google’s Merchant Center?
A. Google is making the free listing program available to all retailers, whether you choose to use Google Ads or not. To sign up, you need to opt-in to surfaces across Google, sign-up for the Merchant Center, and create your Product Feed.

For answers to more FAQ’s check out Google’s Help pages: Show Your Products in Free Product Listings on the Google Shopping Tab.

And you can find out more about our Google Shopping Management services here at JXT Group and what we can do for your small business by requesting a quote.