Google Shopping for free? Google is waving the platform fees

Google Shopping has been available on the market since 2012. Recently we can notice many changes that make using the platform much easier. Some of them were caused by controversies around the company in the past few years. In 2017, the European Commission imposed a financial penalty on Google for favoring its search engine and abusing the company’s strong market position for building a monopoly. We took a closer look at that matter on our website: https://delante.co/google-shopping/

This week, Google has announced yet another change – permanently waiving fees for using Google Shopping. As Bill Ready mentions in his blog post, the decision is influenced by the current situation in the world economy and coronavirus pandemic. Lots of stationery stores were forced to close their doors and sales process in many industries transferred to the online sphere.

Personally, I notice additional, more business-related, motive. Undoubtedly, Google takes up the gauntlet and starts the competition with Amazon, who owns a fair share of the world merchant market.

Google Shopping free of charge

Waving fees for using Google Shopping will enter into force at the end of April in the United States and until the end of 2020 in the remaining countries. This change means that from that point, the shopping section will show the organic search results. For sure, the competition in Google Shopping will become more fierce than before and users will still be able to stand out by paying for sponsored results.

Sponsored products will be displayed at the top and the bottom of the Google Shopping search results page. This won’t influence the overall searching results that will remain in the carousel form placed above the sponsored content.

Google Shopping integrations

Apart from opening for the wider group of potential users, Google is also announcing teaming up with PayPal that will, for sure, make the platform easier to use. PayPal users will be able to connect it with Google Merchant Center making the profile verification process quicker.

Additionally, to make the product feed uploading easier, Google offers integration with i.a. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.