Google Ditches Free Listings Across Europe Amid Digital Markets Act Compliance

Google removed free product listings and popular product carousels from search results across the European Economic Area in two days, leaving merchants without a valuable channel for driving unpaid traffic. According to Hugo Huijer of Productrise, countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands saw declines of approximately 90-100% in free listings.

The removal was not announced in advance and was executed on September 17 and 18. Google confirmed that the change followed from Digital Markets Act requirements in Europe, which prohibit self-preferencing by companies operating a shopping service and ranking competing services.

Merchants who relied on free product listings now have to choose between buying Shopping advertisements, working with comparison shopping services that take a margin, or accepting the loss of unpaid traffic. Comparison shopping services, on the other hand, are set to gain control over inventory built by Google, raising questions about competition and auction dynamics.

On the other side of this trade, Ezoic reported that changing its ad-serving layer to lazy rendering resulted in a 25% drop in display impressions, but a 54% rise in win CPM and 41% increase in revenue per thousand requests. This shift highlights the complexities of display advertising and the need for publishers to adapt to changing market conditions.