Google Shopping free listings

[japancool]

I've listed our products on Google Shopping using the free listings. It works, it's not fantastic. Looking at my competitors who rank above me, some are using paid for adverts, some are not.

How's the best way to improve visibility?

For anyone else who has used this, what's your experience been like?

 

[LPB 123]

For us our paid clicks compared to free clicks from google shopping is about 20:1 (edit double checked and is about 35:1)

I'm not sure how great it is on it's own, just my opinion though I'm sure others may have had a better experience.

What are your conversions like from the free clicks? Could you then set up a paid campaign to target the products that convert well?

 

[japancool]

We haven't had any so far. We're averaging about 600-700 impressions a day at the moment.

 

[LPB 123]

Looking at ours for free clicks for last 30 days

74K impressions, 129 clicks, CTR 0.2%

So for a similar CTR you would get about 1 click per day. I'm not sure how you could improve your visibility sorry.

For ads, we had 640K impressions and 4.57K clicks with a CTR of 0.7%.

The free listings seem pointless in my opinion but hopefully others will have a more positive experience and can help you with your visibility.

 

[intheTRADE]

As mentioned the free listings are pointless as no one is clicking the 'Shopping' tab to go view them

The majority of people purchase from the shopping carousel on the 'All' page and to get in that carousel you need to be doing paid ads

 

[makeusvisible]

We have setup all of our ecom google-ads clients on free google shopping listings, alongside their paid campaigns.

We have one client who is generating over £5k per month from the free listings. But for most clients, the gains are negligible.

Obviously, Google limit what you can do as an advertiser with the free listings, effectively giving you zero room for optimisation. If you really want to run an optimised and tailored Google Shopping campaign, then paid is the only route to go down.

 

[japancool]

Yeah, my last dabble with paid adverts on Google was a bit of a disaster, but that was years ago when I first started. I think I understand targeted advertising better now.

I might give it a go again and see what results we get. My two biggest competitors do it, so it must work for them, but they have much bigger marketing budgets than I do.

 

[Paul Carmen]

The reality is that Google shopping working well is all about data quality, plus pricing as its so easy for customers to compare, so your descriptions, model details, spec and feed setup is very important initially.

The trick is to make sure that you optimise the shopping setup to sell, that sounds simple, but in practice its very hard to do. Google pushes heavily on automation now, but as there is no keyword targeting, you need to use your data to workout what sells and what's driving those sales, then use negative keywords and bid down what doesn't work.

There are ways to automate and structure this properly. It relies on having multiple campaigns for the same products and using negative keywords in layers to focus bids on the searches and products that work to stop wasted spend elsewhere.

 

[japancool]

The trick is to make sure that you optimise the shopping setup to sell, that sounds simple, but in practice its very hard to do. Google pushes heavily on automation now, but as there is no keyword targeting, you need to use your data to workout what sells and what's driving those sales, then use negative keywords and bid down what doesn't work.

I don't believe it's possible to use negative keywords with the free listings. I could be wrong here though.

 

[Paul Carmen]

I don't believe it's possible to use negative keywords with the free listings. I could be wrong here though.

I was responding to you saying you'd give paid a go again.

In our experience the free listings don't really deliver any uplift in most industries, it's worth adding as its free, but the only real driver here is the product descriptions and data quality (a bit like SEO). Everything I referred to was about optimising paid Google shopping campaigns.

 

[japancool]

I made a change the other day to our listings that *appears* to have made a significant difference to our CTR - but it's much too early to say at the moment.

 

[wayzgoose]

As mentioned the free listings are pointless as no one is clicking the 'Shopping' tab to go view them

I do !

 

[japancool]

As mentioned the free listings are pointless as no one is clicking the 'Shopping' tab to go view them

According to the blurb, they should show up in Google Search as well.

 

[intheTRADE]

According to the blurb, they should show up in Google Search as well.

No, free listings definitely don't show up on the Shopping Carousel on the 'All' page

Free listings only appear on the 'Shopping' tab and below the paid carousel on there as well

 

[japancool]

No, free listings definitely don't show up on the Shopping Carousel on the 'All' page

Free listings only appear on the 'Shopping' tab and below the paid carousel on there as well

Oh, I misunderstood. They're supposed to appear on the Shopping Knowledge Panel, but I don't think we get that here in the UK.

 

[japancool]

In case it helps anyone - adding descriptions to my listings has increased the CTR by x2-3, and more than doubled my visibility compared to my top competitors (who all use paid listings).

 

[intheTRADE]

Out of interest, what is is that you sell?

 

[japancool]

Out of interest, what is is that you sell?

Japanese model kits (mostly of giant robots).

 

[conzi]

Is this the same as google merchant centre? Tried to give it a shot and ended up doing my brains in trying to fix ‘validating issues’ or some other such nonsense, is there any tutorials?

 

[fantheflames]

No, free listings definitely don't show up on the Shopping Carousel on the 'All' page

Free listings only appear on the 'Shopping' tab and below the paid carousel on there as well

I can confirm that this is correct from my knowledge of Google Shopping.

If you're using free listings only, make sure you have an amazing product listing.

People's attention span is short, so you'll find that the paid ads do much better than the free ones.

Good luck!