Google’s shopping now dominates up to 80% of e-commerce keywords, pushing organic listings further down the page.
This shift is costing brands—especially major ecommerce brands— visibility, clicks, and revenue, with traffic from top-ranking keywords dropping by as much as 30%.
But you don’t have to settle for lost traffic — there is a way to win it back.
Our Google Shopping webinar teaches strategies to win this major SERP disruption into your biggest traffic opportunity in the new year.
We cover:
- Why Google Shopping rules SERPs—and what this means for SEOs in 2025
- How to optimize feeds and align product data for success
- Proven tactics to boost CTR and reclaim clicks—even on page one
- A 5-step framework to thrive within a shopping-enriched SERP
Watch our on-demand webinar or continue reading to secure your brand’s place in the new ecommerce SERP.
Big Shifts in the Search Results: Google Products In SERPs
Google Products is a SERP Feature that showcases a selection of products from different merchants that relate to the searcher’s query.
Frequently it appears more than once in the same search results page, sometimes 3, 4, or more times as the user scrolls down
Here’s an example of a Google Product Listing compared to the second listing (much further down) in the SERP:
Google Products Appear More Frequently on Desktop
Looking at our seoClarity Research Grid dataset of over half a billion keywords, we found that the Products feature occurs in about 48 and a half million of them on mobile and almost 58 million on desktop.
But the big news is where it’s appearing. Our seoClarity data science team uncovered some telling insights.
Where Google Products Appear In the SERP
Until a couple of years ago, Google predominantly showed only one Product listing per result on mobile.
The dark blue area on this chart stands for just one occurrence of the Product feature in search results.
As you can see, that story soon changed. In May of 2022 Google began increasing the number of occasions where it showed Products multiple times.
This trend peaked in July of 2023 when over 90% of SERPs with the Products feature showed it multiple times in the same SERP.
However, in February of 2024, that trend began to reverse itself, with multiple listings of Products declining slowly over the next several months.
In late 2024, the return of single occurrences of the Products feature is over 70% and still rising.
That seemed to be good news for ecommerce sites that ranked for these keywords in organic search – fewer listings of the feature means less competition for valuable real estate on the search results page.
However, while Google was reducing the number of overall listings of the Products feature, the number of times where it shows in the top three results of a SERP has been growing, and is now at over 60%.
This likely causes a noticeable impact for ecommerce sites where they rank on the first page.
2 June 2024 vs 18 September 2024
Loss of even one position in the top 3 positions can mean a large traffic loss for higher volume keywords.
Here’s an example of the drastic effect that is likely having on important keywords for many ecommerce sites:
In June of 2024, Macy’s ranked number one for summer party dresses and was probably reaping rich traffic rewards. But by September, the Google Popular Products carousel was taking that spot consistently, pushing Macy’s below the fold on mobile.
What’s worse, Macy’s wasn’t ranking in the visible products carousel, so they also weren’t getting much traffic from the feature that was obscuring their hard-earned organic ranking.
Impact of the Google Products SERP Feature by Industry
But the question that’s probably at the top of your mind is which of your keywords are being impacted by this change?
When it comes to assessing the damage, seoClarity clients have the answer in a few clicks.
Because we treat Google SERP features like domains, our clients can do competitive comparisons against them.
Here we can see that this domain lost a rank position to the Google Products carousel.
The Bottom Line
Upon seeing these insights, one seoClarity agency client advised ecommerce sites to optimize their product feeds and product snippets. They noted that the increased promotion of the Products feature above other results means showing up there is more critical than ever.
Optimize and Win the SERP in 2025: A 5-Step Framework
So what can you do to secure your brand’s place in the new ecommerce search landscape? We’ve got you covered with an effective 5-step framework for success.
Here are the best practices to show up more and higher in Google’s products feature:
- Assess the Impact
- Set Expectations
- Focus on Ranking Improvements
- Improve CTR via Testing
- Optimize the Google Shopping Feed
Let’s dive into each step in more detail.
1. Assess The Impact
Find the highest ranking keywords where Products appears and base forecasts on that position.
seoClarity clients: ask for our workflow to make this super simple!
We showed this ecommerce site the high impact keywords where Google Products pushed them out of sight even though they still rank high.
2. Set Expectations
“No ecommerce company should be expecting the same traffic from their keywords next year as they did for this year because Google Products has taken the top positions more and more.”
- Mitul Gandhi, seoClarity Co-founder & Chief Architect
With that in mind, it’s important to brief everyone in your company on how Google Shopping is redefining ecommerce SEO as soon as possible.
Don’t wait for Q1… proactive preparation is better than reactionary excuses!
To ensure your company’s stakeholders are all braced for this massive SERP change, we suggest:
- Sharing our research (this blog/webinar)
- Sharing the impact (following the assessment workflow)
3. Focus on Ranking Improvements
The next step to optimize and win the SERP in 2025 is to focus on ranking improvements.
Here’s how:
- Get more pages indexed – expand your ranking universe
- We see most sites have only a small percentage of products indexed
- Clarity 360 uncovers bottlenecks preventing greater indexation
4. Improve CTR via Testing
To boost click-through rates (CTR), start by identifying your most impacted keywords—those with high impressions but low CTR. These keywords represent opportunities to refine your content’s visibility in search results.
Test improvements to your title tags and meta descriptions, focusing on making them more engaging, relevant, and keyword-rich.
seoClarity’s SEO Split Tester automates this process, allowing you to run more tests efficiently and measure their impact.
With data-driven insights, you can continuously optimize your content to drive more clicks and improve overall search performance.
5. Optimize the Google Shopping Feed
Lastly, optimize your Google Shopping Feed to provide Google with the information it needs to showcase your products prominently in the SERP.
Here’s how to maximize your visibility:
- Upload your product feed to Google Merchant Center (and/or implement auto feed)
- Implement schema on your product pages
- Use clear, high-quality images
- Maintain and display competitive pricing
- Encourage reviews
- Enhance product titles and descriptions
- Consider Google’s auto products updating feature, which automatically pulls the latest product information from your website to keep your listings accurate and up to date.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. You get access to a large GMC account - what are the first things you audit and create a roadmap for to fix?
Look at alignment and fundamentals. Check your product feed to make sure all the available attributes are being sent and make sure there is alignment between your feed and the details on your product pages.
2. How would you recommend optimizing title tags on product pages without cannibalizing keywords on category pages?
Google shopping allows for much longer product titles and we recommend using the space to write more descriptive ones.
Focus on the key product name identifier up-front and then add to it — it has to be useful to the end user and not spammy or keyword-stuffed.
3. Do you believe that Google may scale back on product listings in the future?
Google is an extremely data-driven company. We believe if it is working for them and helps them become more sticky for product searches they will continue to push it.
The increase in rank positions for Google Organic Shopping just before the holiday season may be more opportunistic and it's possible it may pull back on that…but the overall trend for this whole year has been Google pushing Google Shopping into more places and giving it increased visibility which we don't expect to change.
4. Can seoClarity show your ranking within product listings?
Yes! In Rank Intelligence SERP features, you can instantly see the searches showing Products where you show up and, by clicking the list icon that shows when hovering a keyword, see the complete list of brands ranking in the result.
5. Is there any benefit to optimizing product listing pages with schema for Google shopping? Absolutely! Structured data is one of the ways to make sure Google understands all the aspects of your products much more easily than having to parse the text and figure out what elements are product names vs. which ones are prices.
6. When matching the product feed with schema, what are the top attributes that should be in alignment, and what attributes should be focused on when beginning that process?
Key attributes to focus on include unique product titles and descriptions, images, adding product schema, displaying competitive pricing, and showing reviews.
7. If a product page's page title doesn't match the title in the merchant feed, can that hurt Google Shopping impressions in addition to affecting organic visibility?
Google says yes. We’ve seen evidence that they are crawling product pages more after they are submitted to the Merchant Center, and from what they’ve told us, one of the purposes is to check for matchup between the feed and what actually appears on the page.
Conclusion:
Google Shopping is redefining ecommerce search, and brands that adapt will thrive. By assessing the impact, optimizing your feeds, improving CTR, and focusing on ranking improvements, you can turn this SERP disruption into a growth opportunity.
With seoClarity, you have the ability to analyze, optimize, and dominate the evolving ecommerce landscape. Schedule a demo today and make 2025 your breakthrough year!
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