What Are Google Shopping Free Listings?
In April 2020, Google opened up Google Shopping to free organic product listings for all Merchant Center accounts, not just advertisers. This was a significant change â previously, Shopping was exclusively a paid ad channel.
Free listings (officially called "free product listings" in GMC) allow your products to appear in:
- The Google Shopping tab (the dedicated shopping search results page)
- Google Images (product results within image searches)
- Google Lens results
- Google's product knowledge panels
- In some cases, the main Google Search results page (usually in the shopping carousel)
Unlike paid Shopping ads (which appear at the top of Shopping results), free listings are ranked by Google's algorithm based on relevance and data quality. You get clicks from them without paying per click.
For stores with well-optimized feeds, free listings typically account for 15â30% of their total Google Shopping clicks. For some stores in competitive categories with strong brand recognition, it's even higher. This is significant free e-commerce traffic most stores are leaving on the table.
Where Free Listings Appear (And Don't)
Understanding placement helps you optimize correctly:
Shopping Tab (Primary Location)
When someone clicks the "Shopping" tab in Google search, they see a mix of paid ads (clearly labeled "Sponsored") and free organic listings. Free listings can appear anywhere in these results â even above paid ads in some cases â but typically occupy the middle and bottom of the page.
Main Search Results
The shopping carousel at the top of Google's main search results is mostly paid ads, but free listings can appear there for certain searches â particularly product-specific queries where Google is confident about buyer intent.
Google Images
Product images from your GMC feed can appear in Google Images search results with product details overlaid. This is high-intent traffic â someone searched for an image of something and your product came up.
Knowledge Panels and Rich Snippets
For branded products with GTINs, Google may pull your listing into product knowledge panels â the boxes that appear on the right side of search results showing product info, prices, and "where to buy" options. Being in these panels is extremely valuable.
How to Enable Free Listings in Your GMC Account
Free listings should be automatically enabled for verified accounts, but many store owners have them turned off without realizing it. Here's how to check and enable them:
- In GMC, go to Growth â Manage programs
- Look for Free listings and Free local listings
- If either shows "Get started" instead of "Active," click to enable them
- For Free local listings, you'll also need to connect a Google Business Profile
Also check that your products are opted into free listings in your feed settings. In some feed configurations, particularly with third-party feed managers, the excluded_destination attribute might be set in a way that blocks free listings. Verify that Free_listings is not in your excluded destinations.
10 Ways to Optimize for Free Listings
Free listings use a similar ranking system to Google's organic search â relevance and data quality determine placement. Here's how to improve your free listing rankings:
1. Complete All Product Attributes
Products with more complete data get better placement. This means filling in all recommended attributes, not just the required ones: brand, GTIN, color, size, material, age group, gender, condition, and any other relevant attributes for your product category.
2. Write Descriptions for Humans
Unlike paid Shopping ads (which rely mostly on the title), free listings use the full product description for matching. Write descriptions that accurately describe what your product is, who it's for, and what makes it useful. Natural language works better than keyword-stuffed text.
3. Use High-Quality Images
Free listings compete heavily on visual quality. Products with crisp, white-background images where the product clearly dominates the frame perform better. Google's image quality signals factor into free listing placement.
4. Add GTINs to All Branded Products
GTINs connect your products to Google's product knowledge graph. Products with GTINs get matched to authoritative product data, which improves placement in free listings significantly. Unverified products (no GTIN) have to prove themselves from scratch.
5. Keep Prices Competitive
Unlike paid ads where bid strategy controls placement, free listings factor in your price relative to competitors selling the same product. If you're the cheapest source for a GTIN-matched product, your free listing placement improves.
6. Earn and Display Product Reviews
Star ratings from Product Ratings are shown on both paid and free listings. Products with 4+ star ratings with meaningful review counts get significantly higher click-through rates. (More on this in the next section.)
7. Maintain Price Accuracy
Feed-to-page price accuracy directly impacts free listing performance. Google tracks how often your listed price matches what customers see on your website. High accuracy rates = better placement. Frequent mismatches reduce rankings.
8. Optimize Product Titles for Long-Tail Queries
Paid Shopping titles should be short and punchy. Free listing titles can be longer and more descriptive â up to 150 characters â to capture more long-tail query matches. Consider creating a separate supplemental feed with longer, more descriptive titles specifically for free listings.
9. Enable Free Returns Annotation
Products with free returns annotations get higher click-through rates in free listings. Set up your return policy in GMC (Tools â Shipping and Returns â Returns policies) and configure free returns where your business model allows.
10. Improve Your Overall Account Health
Google's free listing algorithm considers overall account health. Accounts with low policy violation rates, high data quality scores, and consistent performance history get better placement across all products. Keep your Diagnostics tab clean.
Product Ratings: The Free Listing Multiplier
Product ratings (the yellow star ratings shown on Shopping listings) are one of the highest-impact free listing optimizations you can make. They're driven by Google's Product Ratings program, which aggregates reviews from your store and third-party review sites.
How to Get Product Ratings
You need a minimum of 3 reviews per product (50 reviews overall) to show ratings. Sources Google accepts:
- Reviews collected through Google's free Google Customer Reviews program
- Integrated review platforms: Yotpo, Bazaarvoice, Trustpilot, Reviews.io, PowerReviews
- Reviews crawled from your website if you use Schema.org structured data correctly
Setting Up Google Customer Reviews (Free)
- In GMC, go to Growth â Manage programs â Google Customer Reviews
- Accept the program terms
- Implement the opt-in survey code on your order confirmation page
- After 50+ reviews are collected, ratings will begin showing on your listings
The review threshold seems high at first, but Google Customer Reviews has an 8â15% opt-in rate from checkout. If you're doing 10+ orders per day, you'll hit 50 reviews in under a month. The compounding CTR improvement from star ratings makes this one of the highest-ROI GMC optimizations you can make.
Measuring Your Free Listing Performance
GMC provides specific reporting for free listings separate from paid Shopping ads. To find it:
- In GMC, go to Performance â Dashboard
- Use the filter to select Free listings (separate from Shopping ads)
- Review impressions, clicks, and click-through rate by product
Key metrics to track:
- Click-through rate (CTR): Average for free listings is 0.5â2%. Below 0.3% suggests title/image issues. Above 3% is excellent.
- Impressions by product: Low impressions on specific products often means poor data quality or category misalignment
- Price competitiveness: Available in the Performance tab â shows how your prices compare to competitors for matched products
Free Listings vs. Shopping Ads: When to Use Each
Free listings and paid Shopping ads aren't competitors â they're complementary. Here's how to think about the relationship:
- Use free listings for: All products, especially long-tail and low-volume queries where paid ads aren't cost-effective. Free listings cover the long tail of Shopping at zero cost.
- Use paid Shopping ads for: Your top-selling products, high-margin SKUs, seasonal campaigns, and competitive categories where you need guaranteed placement and bidding control.
- Run both simultaneously: Products can appear in both paid results (if you're running Shopping ads) and free listings on the same page. This means more total Shopping real estate and a higher chance of getting the click.
The key principle: optimize your feed for free listings as if you had no ad budget. Better feed data improves both your free listing rankings and your paid Shopping ad performance.
Ready to check if your feed is optimized for free listings? Our free GMC scanner identifies data quality issues that affect both your compliance status and your organic Shopping rankings. Also see our deep dive on product feed optimization.