Google has dropped free listing and carousel formats from the European Economic Area (EEA). This change is part of actions taken under the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which compelled Google to make these changes in the region.
Adriaan Dekker posted about this on LinkedIn, crediting Gabriel Baumgarten for spotting it.
He wrote: “Heads up for anyone running Shopping in the EEA. Free listings from Google Shopping look to be disappearing in the EEA. The space is going to price comparison services (CSS) instead. This is part of Google’s DMA compliance after the €460M EU fine in July. Google has been reshaping Search results all month, new aggregator units for hotels, flights and products, and it already pulled the vacation-rental unit on September 8. The compliance deadline is September 25, so expect more movement.”
Here is the screenshot of this.
Hugo Huijer also wrote about this on LinkedIn, sharing a screenshot as well. He wrote: “Over the past two days, Google’s ‘popular products’ carousels — the organic product blocks that appear for commercial queries have almost entirely disappeared from search in the European Economic Area. ~90–100% drops in EEA countries, among which we have sufficient data for Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands.”
Search Engine Roundtable also shared screenshots on this and asked Ginny Marvin: “Is this true? EEA gets no free shopping listings?” Marvin didn’t respond directly to Barry, but pointed him toward this article for more context.
This is a significant shift for merchants relying on free Shopping listings within the EEA, with visibility for organic product carousels dropping nearly entirely in several major countries. With the DMA compliance deadline set for September 25, more changes to how Google displays Shopping and related results in the region are likely still to come.
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