When most people think about Google Shopping, they think about paid ads. The product images that appear at the top of search results with prices and retailer names — those are Shopping campaigns funded by Google Ads budgets.
What fewer people know is that Google also surfaces products in Shopping results for free. These are called free product listings, and any store with a Merchant Center account can participate. You do not need a Google Ads account or an active campaign.
Understanding both channels — and how they work together — gives you more visibility for less spend.
What Shopping Ads Are
Shopping ads are paid product listings that appear in Google Search results, the Google Shopping tab, Google Images, and across the Google Display Network. They are funded by a Google Ads campaign and charged on a cost-per-click basis.
Shopping ads are created from your Merchant Center product feed. You do not write ad copy or choose keywords in the traditional sense. Google reads your feed data — title, description, price, image, category — and uses it to match your products to relevant search queries and generate the ad creative.
You control: budget, bid strategy, which products to include or exclude, and campaign structure. Google controls: which searches trigger your products based on your feed data.
Shopping ads appear prominently — typically above organic search results and free listings — and have historically driven strong performance for ecommerce because they show a product image and price before the click, which pre-qualifies intent.
What Free Listings Are
Free listings are organic product appearances in Google Shopping surfaces. They show the same information as Shopping ads — product image, title, price, retailer name — but they are not paid for on a per-click basis.
Google rolled out free listings broadly in 2020, opening up the Google Shopping tab to organic product results alongside paid ads. Free listings can appear in:
- The Google Shopping tab
- Google Search results (in the shopping unit, typically below paid ads)
- Google Images
- Google Lens results
Free listings are available to any store with an active Merchant Center account and approved products. They do not require a linked Google Ads account or any campaign spend.
The Practical Difference
Where they appear: Paid Shopping ads get priority placement — top of the shopping unit in search results, top of the Shopping tab. Free listings appear below paid ads in the same surfaces, and sometimes in areas where paid ads do not appear at all (certain image search contexts, for example).
What drives visibility: Shopping ad visibility is driven by bid strategy and budget. Free listing visibility is driven by feed quality, price competitiveness, and relevance to the search query. Google determines which free listings to show based on signals similar to organic search ranking — the better your product data matches the query, the more likely you are to appear.
Cost: Shopping ads cost per click. Free listings cost nothing per click, but you have less control over when and where you appear.
Volume: For most stores, paid Shopping ads will drive significantly more traffic than free listings — because you can bid for position and budget for volume. Free listings are supplementary visibility, not a replacement for paid campaigns.
How to Enable Free Listings
If you have an active Merchant Center account with approved products, you are likely already eligible for free listings. Check by going to Growth, Manage programs in Merchant Center and verifying that “Free listings” is enabled.
If it is not enabled, click through and opt in. There is no additional configuration required beyond having an approved Merchant Center account and products that meet Google’s free listings policies.
Free listings uses the same product data as your Shopping ads feed. Whatever is in your feed is what appears in free listings. There is no separate feed to manage.
Surfaces Across Google
Merchant Center also offers a separate program called “Surfaces across Google,” which enables your products to appear in Google Search rich results, Google Images, and Google Assistant responses.
This is a broader organic presence than the Shopping tab free listings. It can drive product appearances in contexts that are not explicitly Shopping searches — image searches, knowledge panel appearances, and local search results for physical products.
Enable this in Growth, Manage programs alongside free listings. Like free listings, it requires no additional configuration beyond your existing Merchant Center setup.
Using Both Together Effectively
The stores that maximize Google Shopping visibility treat paid ads and free listings as complementary, not competing.
Paid Shopping ads drive the majority of volume and allow you to target specific products aggressively, control positioning, and scale spend on what converts.
Free listings provide a base layer of visibility at no additional cost. For products with strong organic relevance — high search volume, competitive pricing, good feed quality — free listings can drive meaningful traffic without any spend.
What this means in practice:
Do not sacrifice feed quality because you are only focused on paid campaign optimization. The same feed quality improvements that help your paid Shopping ads — better titles, complete attributes, competitive pricing, accurate availability — also improve your free listing visibility. Feed optimization pays dividends across both channels simultaneously.
Monitor your free listing traffic in Google Search Console. Go to Search Console, select your property, and check the Shopping tab traffic under Performance. This shows impressions and clicks from free listings separately from paid traffic. Understanding which products generate free listing traffic helps you see where organic Shopping visibility is already strong.
For products where paid ad performance is marginal — high CPC, low conversion rate — do not abandon them entirely if they generate free listing clicks. They may be worth keeping in the feed even if you exclude them from paid campaigns.
Buy on Google
Buy on Google is a separate surface available in the US market that allows customers to complete a purchase directly on Google without visiting the retailer’s site. Google handles the checkout experience.
This is opt-in and requires additional configuration — pricing, inventory, and order management integration with Google. For stores that participate, it can drive conversions from Shopping users who prefer not to leave Google.
Buy on Google listings can appear alongside standard Shopping ads and free listings in the Shopping tab. Not every product category is eligible, and Google has adjusted the program’s availability over time, so check current program availability in your Merchant Center under Manage programs.
The Bottom Line
Every ecommerce store with a Merchant Center account should have free listings enabled. There is no reason not to — it is additional product visibility at zero incremental cost, and the feed quality work you are already doing for paid campaigns makes the same products eligible for free listings automatically.
Paid Shopping ads remain the primary driver of volume and performance. But treating them as the only Shopping channel means leaving organic product visibility on the table.
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