Free listings are product results that a retailer pays nothing to appear in. On Google, the term covers the unpaid product cards shown on the Shopping tab, in the main search results, in Google Images and Lens, on Maps and, in some countries, on YouTube, each assembled from product data the merchant supplies or Google crawls. They exist because Google decided in 2020 that shopping results, like its web index, should not be open only to those who buy ads. The paid equivalent, Shopping ads, draws on the same catalogue and sits beside them. Microsoft runs a parallel programme on Bing.

How a product becomes a free listing

The route on Google runs through Google Merchant Center, the free console in which sellers submit catalogue data. Each item arrives as a record in a product feed or another data source, and must carry the attributes Google lists as required on its "Free listings for products" help page: id, title, description, link, image link, price and availability, plus, depending on the product, a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) or Manufacturer Part Number (MPN), brand, condition and item group ID. Apparel adds colour, size, age group and gender. Shipping settings are mandatory in 30 countries, from Australia to the United States, and Google asks merchants to add a return policy.

New Merchant Center accounts are opted in by default, according to Google. For older accounts the switch is a "Free listings" card under Marketing, then Marketing methods, and only an account administrator can change it.

There is a second, less visible route. Since September 13, 2022, according to Google's Search Central blog, product pages carrying schema.org Product structured data have been eligible for what Google calls merchant listing experiences without any Merchant Center account, with a Merchant listings report in Search Console to flag markup errors. Google's help documentation goes further, stating that products crawled from an online store may be shown even without markup or feed data; robots and indexing controls are the only off switch.

Approval is not placement: Google's own page warns that an eligible status guarantees nothing about display. No bid is involved, so position depends on relevance and on how complete and consistent the data is. A running shoe submitted without a GTIN, with a title that omits size and colour, may be approved yet rarely surface; one whose feed price differs from its landing page risks disapproval.

Where the listings appear

Google names several surfaces. On Search they take the form of rich results showing price, availability and reviews, a Shopping Knowledge Panel available in 11 countries and, in the United States on mobile only, Popular Products carousels for apparel and accessories. The Shopping tab shows a grid of free listings, with Shopping ads in their own slots. Images and Lens show a "Product" label; Maps and the products module of a Google Business Profile carry in-store items; Gemini is listed as a surface, and YouTube shows free listings in a limited set of countries.

Measurement arrived later. In February 2022 Google added auto-tagging to free listings, appending a result identifier to clicked URLs so that Google Analytics could separate the traffic. In March that year Merchant Center began showing conversions from free product listings once a Google Analytics 4 property was linked.

From paid inclusion back to free

Google's product search began free, as Froogle in 2002, and became paid when Google Product Search was rebranded Google Shopping on May 31, 2012. For eight years, appearing in the Shopping tab meant running Product Listing Ads, later called Shopping ads.

That changed on April 21, 2020. In a post titled "It's now free to sell on Google", Bill Ready, then Google's president of commerce, wrote that "search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings," and that existing Merchant Center users need take no action. PPC Land reported the US launch and the stated aim of a worldwide rollout before the year end.

On June 29, 2020 Google brought free listings into the main results page, removing the "Sponsored" label from the stores list in product knowledge panels; it reported a 70 per cent increase in clicks and a 130 per cent increase in impressions across free listings and ads since April, according to 9to5Google. At the end of September Google announced that free listings would reach Shopping tabs across Europe, Asia and Latin America by mid-October, citing roughly twice as many views and 50 per cent more visits for US retailers that combined free listings with ads.

Microsoft moved in between. On August 18, 2020, Search Engine Land reported that organic product listings had opened on the Bing Shopping tab for US merchants, with expansion planned to the UK, Canada, Australia, France and Germany. Microsoft's documentation describes the same mechanics: approved offers in a Microsoft Merchant Center store are opted in automatically, clicks are free, and a toggle labelled "Show free Product Listings in the shopping tab" opts out. Products can arrive by file, by API or by import from Google Merchant Center.

Why marketers track them

Callum Lockwood, SEO director at Re:Signal, said in March 2026 that "organic shopping isn't just another SERP feature anymore, it should be treated as a channel in its own right." Hugo Huijer, founder of the monitoring firm Productrise, put it differently: "We are entering the age of product SEO."

The same Productrise research, covering more than 1 million listings across 50,000 US results pages in early 2026, showed Walmart appearing under more than 1,600 seller names in organic carousels, all resolving to Walmart.com. Only 13.7 per cent of carousels showed a different retailer in every slot.

For advertisers, free and paid listings interact. Both read the same Merchant Center records, so a fix to a title or GTIN affects both. When Amazon withdrew from Google Shopping ads in July 2025, one analyst also reported its absence from free listings, a sign that the two depend on the same account connection, though Amazon never confirmed the cause.

Limitations and disputes

The line between free and paid has been eroding. On April 20, 2026 the researcher Brodie Clark documented sponsored tiles inside the Shopping tab's free listing grid, a space that had been organic since 2020.

AI surfaces shrink the space further. A July 2026 Productrise study of about 2 million listings in the US and UK found that AI Mode showed roughly 95 per cent fewer product listings than standard search for the same queries, and that only 0.8 per cent of products overlapped. Reporting is also volatile: from August 24, 2026 Merchant Center moved YouTube affiliate clicks out of organic traffic, restating figures back to July 1.

Defaults are a third concern. Because new accounts are opted in and crawled products may appear without a feed, inclusion is closer to opt-out than opt-in. In September 2026 Google told Shopify merchants their stores had been matched to Merchant Center with checkout enabled in AI Mode, leaving opt-out to the merchant.

The deepest dispute is competitive. Rivals have argued since the European Commission's June 27, 2017 decision, which fined Google 2.42 billion euros for favouring its own comparison shopping service, that Google's product units are a form of self-preferencing whether paid or not. In December 2024 more than 20 European price comparison sites said Google's proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA) changes still favoured its own service. On July 1, 2026 a Stockholm court awarded PriceRunner's owner 950 million pounds in UK damages, finding that the abuse had never stopped. Google, for its part, has described its European compliance changes as reducing the quality of its search results.

Not the same as

Shopping ads. Paid placements bought in Google Ads on a cost-per-click basis, through Standard Shopping or Performance Max. They share the feed but not the economics; free listings carry no bid and no guaranteed position.

Local inventory ads and free local listings. Local inventory ads are paid units for in-store stock. Free local listings are their unpaid counterpart, showing store hours, distance and availability for merchants who submit local inventory data.

Google Business Profile listings. A Google Business Profile describes a business location on Search and Maps. It can display products, but it is a listing for a place, not for an offer.

Marketplace listings. On Amazon, Etsy or eBay, "listing" means putting an item up for sale, and it is seldom free: Etsy charges 20 US cents per listing, according to its fee schedule, while eBay grants up to 250 zero-insertion-fee listings a month but takes a final value fee on each sale. Facebook Shops, launched on May 19, 2020, cost nothing to set up, with fees applied to sales and reach driven largely by ads.

Recent developments

Europe has now lost them. On September 17 and 18, 2026, free product listings and popular product carousels disappeared from Google Search across the European Economic Area, with Productrise measuring declines of 90 to 100 per cent in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed the removal followed from DMA requirements; the change landed days before compliance obligations under case DMA.100193 fell due. The space goes to comparison shopping services, which already submit merchants' products in 21 European markets.

As of October 2026, free listings remain live in the United States and other markets outside the EEA, where Google's help documentation still describes them without regional exceptions. EEA merchants are left with three options: paid Shopping ads, a margin paid to a comparison service, or lost traffic.

Timeline

  • December 2002: Google launches Froogle, a free product search index
  • May 31, 2012: Google Product Search becomes Google Shopping, with paid inclusion
  • June 27, 2017: The European Commission fines Google 2.42 billion euros in the Google Shopping case
  • April 21, 2020: Google announces that the US Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings
  • May 19, 2020: Facebook launches Shops, free to set up
  • June 29, 2020: Free listings extend to Google's main search results and knowledge panels
  • August 18, 2020: Free product listings open on the Bing Shopping tab for US merchants
  • September 30, 2020: Google announces free listings for Europe, Asia and Latin America from mid-October
  • February 2022: Google adds auto-tagging to free listings in Merchant Center
  • March 21, 2022: Merchant Center begins reporting free listing conversions from Google Analytics 4
  • September 13, 2022: Pages with Product structured data become eligible for merchant listing experiences
  • December 11, 2024: More than 20 comparison sites say Google's DMA changes still favour its own service
  • July 21 to 23, 2025: Amazon removes its Google Shopping ads globally
  • April 20, 2026: Sponsored tiles are documented inside the Shopping tab's free listing grid
  • July 1, 2026: A Stockholm court awards Klarna Technologies 950 million pounds over Google Shopping
  • August 24, 2026: Merchant Center moves YouTube affiliate clicks out of organic traffic reporting
  • September 17 to 18, 2026: Free product listings disappear from Google Search across the EEA

Summary

Who: Google operates free listings, with Microsoft running an equivalent on Bing. Retailers, brands and marketplaces supply the product data, while comparison shopping services, regulators and researchers such as Productrise contest or monitor them.

What: Unpaid product results built from Merchant Center feeds, structured data or crawling, shown without a bid alongside paid Shopping ads.

When: Google launched them in the United States on April 21, 2020 and internationally from October 2020. They were removed across the European Economic Area on September 17 and 18, 2026.

Where: The Shopping tab, main search results, Images, Lens, Maps, YouTube in some countries and Gemini on Google; the Shopping tab on Bing.

Why: Google presented them as a way to reach shoppers whether or not merchants advertise. They matter because they turned product data into an organic channel, and because they sit at the centre of Europe's long dispute over self-preferencing.