In this blog post, you will learn about the requirements for publishing the so-called "Free Listings" on Google Shopping.
What are Free Listings on Google?
Up until the end of last year, Google Shopping account owners had to pay to have their products displayed in Google Search or the
Shopping tab for matching product searches. With "Free Listings" now available, organic results are displayed below paid product
ads.
As with normal ads, the first positions are reserved for paid placements.
Example of a search query:
The first line
shows the sold product ads and the second line shows the organic hits (free listings).
Placements
The "Free Listings" are displayed in different Google areas. These include the search results page, the shopping tab and the image
search. Depending on the placement, Google has different requirements that must be met in order for the product ads to be displayed by Google.
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/9199328?hl=en
Update in fall 2022: more product images
More product images in Google search results pages will be made possible by the Google Shopping update in fall 2022, initially only in the USA. This will make the entire presentation on Google more visual and visually appealing. Anyone searching for a specific product on Google on the desktop, and soon on mobile devices as well, can now filter down to their favorite product without leaving the page, using a wide variety of selected product images. Thus, it becomes more important for store owners to overlay many and more item images.
The Smartstore plugin has the setting Configuration / Additional images in its export profile for this purpose. If the option is disabled, only one image is exported. If it is enabled, up to 10 images will be exported from the Smartstore store to Google. An ideal basis for even more visuality and sales!
Requirements
To publish your store products you need a Google Merchant account:
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188924?hl=en
The store products can be transferred with the "Google Merchant Center Feed" plug-in included in Smartstore.
Within the product
details, the Google specific requirements can be defined. In addition, you can determine if the product should be exported to the Google
Merchant Center Feed.
The created feed can be transferred to the Google Merchant Center account both automatically and manually.
You can find
detailed instructions about the Google Merchant Center feed under the following link: https://docs.smartstore.com/display/SMNET40/Managing+Export+Profiles