Merkle contributor Melissa Reilly has published a comprehensive article on Google’s unpaid shopping listings.

She says, “Back in late April, Google announced the roll out of free traffic on its Shopping tab to help merchants better connect with consumers. The pandemic was in its earlier stages in the US and many small businesses were struggling after closing their doors to foot traffic. While targeted at small businesses that don’t have large enough advertising budgets to compete on paid listings, the free listings were made available to anyone with a feed in the Merchant Center, including large retailers.

Now that free listings have been live for 7+ months and were expanded out to the main SERP, we pulled some data to check in on what Merkle clients are seeing and share potential considerations heading into 2021.

Click traffic as a percentage of paid clicks has remained fairly steady

Across our sampling of retailers, free traffic as a percentage of paid Shopping traffic hovered between 4.5% and 5.1% for the months of August through November, peaking in October”.

Google Unpaid Shopping Listings: Where Are They Now?

Sharing is caring