Google removes product carousels in Europe

Product carousels have almost entirely disappeared from Google’s shopping-related search results in the European Economic Area (EEA). For online retailers, a large part of their visibility in organic Shopping results has abruptly vanished.

Google announced the move last week, in order to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). According to the company, it comes with the biggest decline in search result quality in its 29-year history. The change affects online retailers in all European Union member states, as well as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Together, these countries make up the EEA.

Popular product blocks

The rollout has now begun, according to several industry observers. Productrise, a Dutch organic shopping analytics platform, reports that the familiar popular product blocks have almost completely disappeared from search results in EEA countries.

‘We are seeing declines of 90 to 100 percent’

Productrise tracks product carousels across thousands of queries every day. “We are seeing declines of 90 to 100 percent within just a few days, while results in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other non-EEA countries remain unchanged”, founder Hugo Huijer told Ecommerce News Europe. The figure below, based on data from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, illustrates the decline.

Fundamental shift

According to Huijer, the impact of the change is significant: “For online retailers in Europe, this means that a large part of the organic Shopping visibility they have built up has disappeared within a very short period of time.” He describes it as a fundamental shift in how organic visibility works for anyone selling products online. “A feature many companies built their strategies around is gone for now.”

Productrise expects category pages to become more important again within organic search.

A list of shops and aggregators

Consumers who want to see Google Shopping results will now have to take several additional steps (clicks) to get there, notes Kristian Kunz of German industry platform SEO Südwest. Instead of the familiar product carousels and product grids, users are now presented with a list of shops and aggregators, such as price comparison sites.

Shopping has also disappeared from the tab navigation in Google’s search engine. “It cannot be found under ‘More’, either”, Kunz writes on LinkedIn. “Only Google Shopping Ads are still present.”

Shopping disappeared from Google’s tab navigation

Being listed in Google Merchant Center is now significantly less valuable because the corresponding products are hardly displayed anymore, Kunz argues. “SEO for products is also less relevant now – at least when it comes to measures directly related to Google Shopping.”

According to the industry observer, larger online retailers may see more direct traffic as a result of Google’s change. Smaller online retailers, on the other hand, may find it more difficult to gain visibility through online marketing.

Organic visibility is decling

Organic visibility has been under pressure for some time due to the rise of AI Overviews in Google. The share of organic traffic in total website traffic has declined, at least according to recent research in Germany.