Free Google Shopping for retailers
Google has announced that it is making advertising on Google Shopping free for retailers by the end of the year. In light of the challenges faced by the retail sector during the coronavirus pandemic, Google hopes to help by removing the pay per click element of Google Shopping. This rolls out in the US this month, and the aim is to expand it globally over the coming months.
Google Shopping is the product feed that you see on the Google search results page (try searching “garden deck chairs” for example). Typically, this is managed through Google Ads and you pay for any clicks on those product listings which send the user to your site.
To take advantage of this, we recommend that you set up a Google Merchant Centre account and create a product feed from your website. A word of caution, this is always a tricky process! The basic idea is:
Products on website > product feed / list / file > Google Merchant Centre > Google Shopping
There are plenty of guides online for how to do this: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en-GB
The view is that this is primarily an altruistic exercise by Google to aid retailers. However, there is also an opportunity for them to increase Google Shopping’s penetration of the ecommerce market, something they seemed to have struggled with over the years.
More from Google here: https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-sell-on-google/
We hope you find this useful and can take advantage of it!
If you need any help, please get in touch at hello@adpr.co.uk.