Google Merchant Center free listings: still free, but in the EEA they barely show now

Google Merchant Center free listings still cost nothing: Google calls Merchant Center "a free tool" and switches free listings on by default for new accounts. What changed is where they show. Since mid-September 2026, trade monitoring reports free product blocks nearly gone in the European Economic Area (EEA), so check which of three situations you are in before you spend on ads. Facts here were read October 29, 2026.

Google Merchant Center free listings cost nothing, and Shopping ads are the paid part

Google's getting-started page says "Merchant Center is a free tool" and that products can appear across Search, Maps and YouTube "for free." Google's free listings page adds that a new account is "opted in to free listings by default," and that the free listings status "doesn't guarantee that your products will be shown to customers."

The paid layer is separate. Google Ads documents that Shopping ads are charged by cost-per-click: "You're charged only when someone clicks an ad." So a free account, free listings and paid Shopping ads can all run from one product feed. If you use a partner integration, Google says product data comes in through the Merchant API and changes go through the partner's portal.

For a store that is not selling into Europe, nothing in the pages we read on October 29 says this changed. Google's free listings page lists the places a free listing may appear: the Shopping tab, rich results, Popular Products, the Shopping Knowledge Panel, Google Images, Lens and YouTube.

What changed in the EEA in September 2026

Google's Search Central page on regional differences in Search, last updated September 18, 2026, says Google is "evolving the search results page" to give new openings to comparison shopping services, direct suppliers and other providers. For the EEA it lists an aggregator unit and a supplier unit that cover product queries.

Search Engine Roundtable reported on September 18 that Google Search dropped free product listings and carousel formats from the EEA, and that Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed in a comment that the removal was due to the Digital Markets Act. It quotes Productrise's Hugo Huijer: "~90–100% drops in EEA countries, among which we have sufficient data for Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands." That is third-party monitoring of the Popular products carousel, not a Google figure.

The sources disagree on details. A ValueYourNetwork write-up dated October 5 puts the drop around September 17 and 18, says the Productrise figures are unaudited, and says that as of September 21 it found no detailed Merchant Center change-log entry documenting a complete removal. We found the same gap on October 29: Google's free listings help page does not mention the EEA, the Digital Markets Act or any removal. It also still says Popular Products is "available on mobile in the US only," which does not match carousels measured in European countries. We can't tell whether that page is out of date or the measured carousels are another format.

One thing it is not: the September policy merge. Google announced on July 15 that it would consolidate the Shopping ads and free listings policies into one set, and said this "does not introduce substantive changes to or more restrictive enforcement of the policies." A traffic drop on September 17 is not explained by that notice.

Which of three situations are you in

The supplier unit is where the trade-off sits. Google says it is "a dedicated feature for direct providers" and that it only appears if the aggregator unit appears. Its examples are hotels, airlines, brick-and-mortar owners and plumbers, and it says you "don't need to provide additional data beyond what's accessible through web crawling." The page does not say whether an online shop counts as a direct provider for product queries, so we would not assume it does.

Why did my free listings traffic drop in Europe

Separate a delivery change from a feed problem first. The ValueYourNetwork article makes the same point: an approved product can still get no impressions, and a drop is not automatically a feed rejection. Look at the date. A step down on September 17 or 18 across several EEA countries, with the same feed and no new Merchant Center warnings, points to the search page change. A drop in one country or on one day only, or with new disapprovals, points to your data.

What a comparison shopping service does, and whether you need one

Google's CSS help page says CSSs "must be used to place Shopping ads and free product listings on Google on behalf of merchants" in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

On cost, Google's page says CSSs, "including Google Shopping," pay Google for clicks and "can choose how to invoice their merchants"; for example, Google Shopping "generally charges its merchants based on a CPC model." You can use several CSSs at once without paying more per click. The CSS invoice is a negotiation between you and the CSS, so ask for its fee in writing.

For product queries, Google's aggregator unit page, updated October 19, says a business must be approved as a Vertical Search Service and send Google data to join, and sends product businesses to the comparison shopping services contact form. A single small shop does not apply there directly. A CSS does.

Check your own account before you change anything

1. In Merchant Center, open Marketing methods and read the "Free listings" card to confirm free listings are on.
2. Open Performance and filter to free listings, as Google's help page describes, and export daily clicks by country from August 1.
3. Mark September 17 and 18, and compare EEA countries with the rest.
4. Review "Needs attention" on the Products page for new disapprovals, so a feed fault is not mistaken for the DMA change.
5. Cross-check against your own analytics, and use Google Search Console to see how your product pages perform in Search.

If the break lines up with September 17 and 18 only in EEA countries, we'd treat it as the search page change and stop editing the feed. Shopping ads in Google Ads are click-priced, so in our view a small cap per country is the safer way to test them.

Feed tools tidy your data, and they will not restore the carousel

Feed apps help with the work Google does require. AdNabu says on its site that it syncs Shopify products to Merchant Center and flags issues such as missing GTINs; its pricing page, read October 29, lists a free Starter plan of up to 100 products and one target country. In our view that is a reasonable way to keep a catalog clean, but no feed tool can make Google show a block it has removed.

Upfynd lists 278 products in E-commerce and 306 in Marketplaces and On-demand as of October 2026. If you sell through a marketplace such as Etsy, Google may not be the only door; our earlier post on AI shopping agents covers a different route to shoppers. If you make a shop tool, list it on Upfynd for free.

Pages like these change, and this post is not tax or legal advice. Read Google's current documentation, and check with an adviser if real money rests on an EEA ad budget.