Google Shopping has not disappeared. The space now belongs to comparison shopping services.

The reporting over the last few days has been: Google Shopping's free listings have disappeared from EU search. This describes the change incorrectly, and the difference has significant consequences for merchants.

What has disappeared are the embedded product grids that contained offers linking directly to the shop. In their place is a section in which each Comparison Shopping Service receives its own expandable box with its own logo and its own inventory. Google's own comparison service is just one box among several within this.

The crucial point: what is inside these boxes are product pages from comparison services, not product listings. A click leads to a comparison page with multiple offers, not directly to the shop. The space has therefore been taken over, but the free product listings have not been replaced. They have been replaced by something else.

The most important points in 30 seconds

• The product grids are gone, but the space is not. It now shows an accordion with one box per Comparison Shopping Service, each with its own branding and inventory.

• Inside the boxes are product pages, not product listings. Clicking leads to a comparison page with multiple offers, not directly to the shop. The direct organic route from the search result to the shop is therefore gone for this space.

• It is an organic space, not an ad space. It is not marked as sponsored. The paid Shopping ads continue to exist alongside it unchanged.

• It is an SEO space. Comparison services with genuine, search-engine-optimised product pages are displayed. Those who merely mirror feed products without independent pages will not appear there. Consequently, established price comparison sites or subpages optimised for a niche dominate. With a Label Up CSS, you can also appear here and gather clicks.

• This is not surprising. The same structure has been running in the travel sector for some time, and comparable designs were already present in Commission tests in 2024. The only new thing is that it is now live in product search.

• Switching to a large comparison service will not bring you visibility there. Why that is, is explained below. What works instead is also covered.

What happens on the search results page

Under the "Comparison Sites" section, each Comparison Shopping Service gets its own expandable box with a logo and name. Here, Google's box is expanded and shows four swipeable cards, each with an image, product name, price, and the note "& more prices" — indicating that there is an offer overview behind it and not a single merchant offer. Regular organic results appear above and below the section, in this case Cdiscount, Boulanger, and which.co.uk.

Three differences from the first view. Firstly, the section does not carry a label like "Comparison Sites", but a generated product title, here "Blue Water Bottles". Secondly, Google is not expanded, but rather the comparison service GoodBuy; below it are the collapsed boxes of Shoparize and auspreiser.de, with further services located behind "More products". Thirdly, below the accordion follows a separate section called "Stores" with organic merchant results including a thumbnail and description, here Amazon.de and Haus-Hobby-Garten.

Three observations on this:

The top box does not automatically belong to Google. In the second view, GoodBuy is expanded, and Google Shopping is not visibly present there. The space is therefore genuinely open and not just renamed.

Merchants get their own section in one variation. The "Stores" block shows shops as independent organic results with a thumbnail and description, independent of any comparison service. This is the space where a shop is visible without any detour.

The labels are not localised. For a German-language query, the elements are "Blue Water Bottles", "Stores", "More products", and "View more". This points to an ongoing test rather than a final rollout.

Additionally, there is the navigation: the Shopping tab has disappeared from the tab bar and cannot be found under "More" either. Anyone wanting to access the Google Shopping overview must open "More products" in the results list, select Google there, and then click "View more".

The structure is stable, the design varies

We have reproduced the new space in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. The accordion with one box per comparison service remains constant. What varies is the section heading, the presence of the "Stores" merchant block, as well as the order and selection of the boxes.

We do not have our own confirmation for other markets in the European Economic Area. This is a gap in observation and not a finding.

We assume that the design will still change while the basic principle remains. The latter follows directly from the Commission's decision, the former is typical testing behaviour.

Practical consequence: Anyone basing decisions on a single layout variant may be optimising for something that will be gone in two weeks. On the other hand, the question of which infrastructure allows you to be represented in this space at all is structural.

What we see in the data, and what we are deliberately not publishing yet

Across the Merchant Centers we manage, the first few days after the changeover show a decline in organic impressions and clicks in the region of just over 20 per cent, with a sharper decline in clicks than in impressions.

We will not say more at this point, and that is a deliberate decision. A comparison window of just a few days is dominated by day-of-the-week effects and individual large accounts. A breakdown by country or product group on this basis would be pseudo-accuracy. We will publish the robust analysis as soon as a window of at least four weeks is available, and supplement it here.

What can already be said: Impressions do not drop to zero. This is to be expected because Merchant Center organics cover multiple spaces, including product knowledge panels and image search, and because offers via comparison services continue to appear in the new space, just in a different packaging. Anyone wanting to check how much their own account is affected can find this in the Merchant Center and in the merchant listings report in Search Console under Performance and Search Appearance.

That clicks are falling more sharply than impressions is plausible: an embedded product grid attracts more clicks than an accordion where the user first has to expand a service.

The most important point: These are product pages, not product listings

This is where the difference lies that is completely missing from the reporting and which determines what you should do now.

What was previously in the space: Product listings from the Merchant Center. One offer, one merchant, one click directly to the shop.

What is now in the space: Product pages from comparison services. One page, multiple offers, one click to an intermediate page from which the user clicks through.

For a merchant, this means: It is not the visibility that is gone, but the direct path. The organic click that previously landed in the shop now lands on a comparison page first. This exact point was addressed by a coalition of European comparison services in an open letter to the European Commission on 8 September 2026, a few days before the changeover: forced intermediate clicks create friction, increase costs for merchants, and harm user satisfaction. Among other things, the letter demanded that comparison services wishing to lead users directly to the merchant's site should be allowed to do so.

Why established price comparison sites dominate there

The space is organic. This means: it is populated according to the criteria by which Google evaluates organic results, not according to feed configuration.

Therefore, comparison services displaying genuine, search-engine-optimised product pages are shown: pages with independent content, clean structure, functioning indexing, and multiple offers per product. A comparison service that merely mirrors feed products without providing independent, indexable pages for them will not appear in this space.

This explains why names like idealo or billiger.de appear there and not just any comparison services from the CSS program. It is not a privilege, but a consequence of the fact that these providers have been operating product pages that rank organically for years.

Why switching to a large comparison service won't help you there

This is the misconception that is currently likely to trigger most bad decisions: "Idealo is visible there, so I'll go to a large comparison service and I'll be visible too."

That does not work, for two reasons.

Firstly, these are two different systems. Price comparison portals like idealo or billiger.de do not populate their product pages from the Google Merchant Center. They have their own merchant relationships, their own feeds, and their own billing models, usually via affiliate programs or direct contracts. Being listed there is a separate business decision with separate integration and separate costs. There is no Google setting to achieve this, and connecting a Merchant Center to a Comparison Shopping Service will not do it.

Secondly, the visibility there is not yours. If you as a merchant appear on a price comparison site's product page, their page ranks, not yours. You are one of several offers on someone else's page. This may make commercial sense, but it does not replace free Google Shopping listings. The fact that the new space occupies the same spot on the search results page that your product listings previously had does not make it a replacement.

And what a Comparison Shopping Service continues to do remains unchanged. The delivery of paid Shopping ads runs through a CSS, and you will continue to be represented in the Google Shopping tab, as and where it appears. The changeover has not altered this. Anyone switching their CSS because of the new space is solving a problem that the CSS switch does not address, and risks breaking setups in a functioning channel.

What is actually possible in this space

There is a way to appear in the new space with your own page, and it is concrete, but subject to a condition.

Anyone running their own Comparison Shopping Service can set up their own product pages for it and deliver them optimised for search engines. Via Label Up, you can run your own branded CSS with such product pages. This makes it possible to appear in this space with your own page alongside the Google Shopping entries and the established price comparison sites. [HERE is the only internal link in the article, to the CSS product page]

Realistically, this is not feasible across the board, but rather where competition for organic visibility is lower: for niche products and for brand and model searches, i.e., queries for which the large portals do not have a strong page or for which there are few offers.

The technical condition: A product page must function as a comparison page, which means it must be able to show at least two offers. A page with a single offer is not a price comparison. For your own, exclusive products, this can be solved using offers from other merchants for the same product, matched via GTIN, including marketplace offers. Anyone selling exclusively products without a GTIN and without any second-party seller cannot utilize this space via their own product page.

This is not an alternative to the discontinued product listings. It is an additional, self-controlled space whose success depends on SEO and not on a configuration. We consider this to be an approach that works with the right selection of products, rather than a universal solution.

And what belongs to you without any detour

Regardless of all the above: The "Stores" block in one of the layout variants shows shops as independent organic results. This space depends on classic product and category page optimisation and not on any comparison service. For merchants, this is the visibility that belongs to no one else, and its relative importance has increased with the changeover.

Why this was foreseeable

The space looks new, but it isn't. It is the application of a pattern that has been running elsewhere for a long time to product search.

The structure has existed in the travel sector for some time. There, Google distinguishes between a space for comparison and booking portals and one for direct providers. On 8 September 2026, Google further remodelled this area in the European Economic Area, removing live prices and date filters from its own provider space and shutting down the unit for holiday rentals.

Drafts in this direction were already available in 2024. As part of the tests that the European Commission carried out at the time for implementation, mockups of layouts circulated that structurally correspond to the state that has now gone live. Anyone involved in these processes has known the direction for two years.

What is new is therefore not the concept, but the timing and the fact that it went live without announcement.

Why it had to look exactly like this

The basis is the European Commission's implementing decision C(2026) 5358 final of 23 July 2026, proceedings DMA.100193. The Commission found that Alphabet has been in breach of Article 6(5) of the Digital Markets Act since 7 March 2024, because Google Search treats its own services more favourably in terms of ranking than comparable third-party services. The fine is 460 million euros, and the deadline for compliance is 60 calendar days. It therefore ends around 21 September 2026.

Recital 713 mentions two ends of a spectrum. Alphabet can either extend the prominence of its own services to comparable third-party services equally, or remove its own prominence entirely. For travel and for organic product search, Google chose the former in each case: open up instead of delete.

Recitals 214, 219, 220, 221, and 222 define what opening up means. Five times in identical wording, the Commission demands that a third-party comparison service has its own box, embedded in the search results page, visible immediately after entering the search query, with multiple offers from its own inventory that the user can compare directly on the search results page. This is exactly what can be seen in the screenshots.

Recital 253 explains the removal of the Shopping tab. The Commission objected to the fact that Google's comparison service receives a reserved page via the products tab that exclusively extends its own inventory, while no third party receives such a tab. With over a thousand approved comparison services in the European Economic Area, building one tab per service was not feasible, so the tab was dropped.

Recitals 78 and 214 close off the easy way out. Prominence that depends on requirements that do not apply to Google itself is not equal treatment according to the decision. Anyone who has to become a business partner of Alphabet in order to become visible becomes a supplier to Google's own service. Simply giving third parties a stronger share within a Google space was therefore out of the question.

This line of reasoning is older than the DMA. Footnote 43 of the decision refers to the judgment of the General Court of the European Union of 10 November 2021 in T-612/17, confirmed by the European Court of Justice on 10 September 2024 in C-48/22 P. There it is stated that participation in the Shopping Units requires competing comparison services to change their business model and become customers of Google's comparison service instead of remaining its competitors. Since 2021, it has thus been legally established that mere participation in a Google space is not equal treatment. The box structure follows from this.

Who gets the expanded box?

The space has one expanded slot. Everything below it is collapsed, and barely anyone sees what lies behind "More products". Thus, the crucial question shifts from "do I appear" to "in which position".

The decision says nothing about this. It defines the standard for the space, not the mechanism of its allocation. Since the space is organic, the answer is likely to lie in the organic evaluation of the respective product pages, i.e., in relevance, page quality, and depth of offers. This is not confirmed.

Legally, the leverage for this question lies not in Article 6(5), but in the obligation to provide fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access conditions under Article 6(12). The Commission itself notes in Recital 89 that it must take this obligation into account when assessing the measures.

We are setting up an ongoing measurement for this: a fixed set of transactional search queries across multiple markets, tracking which comparison service receives the top box and how frequently. We will add results here.

What is still open and actually much more important: the paid space

The decision objects to two spaces, not one.

In Recitals 114 to 119, the Commission also classifies the paid Shopping unit as Google's own independent comparison service, not as a pure ad format. Recital 221 states that the possibility of placing ads within this unit does not constitute equal treatment. Recital 260 rejects Alphabet's objection that Google's own comparison service does not get its own space either: the unit itself is that comparison service.

Google has not changed anything about this space so far. This is the observation that is missing from all reporting.

Our assessment, clearly marked as such: Given that Google has built rather than deleted in both the travel sector and organic product search, we consider an analogous structure in the paid sector to be more likely than the unchanged status quo. What it would look like is open. For merchants and agencies, this is the point to keep an eye on, because the paid space is currently the only path, apart from text results, leading from product search directly into the shop.

What follows if the Commission deems the measures insufficient is set out in Article 4 of the decision's operative part: periodic penalty payments under Article 31(1)(h), running from the end of the deadline, with a cap of 5 per cent of the average daily worldwide turnover. By contrast, the fine of 460 million euros represents a fraction of a percent of Alphabet's annual turnover.

What to do now

For Shops

First, check if and how much you are affected. Draw the comparison before and after the changeover from the Merchant Center and from the merchant listings report in Search Console. The impact is account-specific, and it depends on which spaces your organic reach previously came from.

Do not switch Comparison Shopping Services to appear in the new space. This does not address the problem, because the space is populated organically and the price comparison portals do not fill their pages from the Merchant Center. A CSS switch is a decision about your paid delivery, not about organic visibility.

Assess the portals separately and commercially. If you want to appear on idealo, billiger.de, and comparable portals, that is a separate decision about affiliate or direct contracts, with separate integration and separate costs. Calculate it like a channel, not like a Google setting.

Strengthen the visibility that belongs to you alone. Product and category page optimisation carries relatively more weight now, because the merchant block is the space where you appear without an intermediary.

Keep an eye on the paid space. It is currently the only path leading from product search directly into the shop. Monitor Impression Share and cost-per-click separately; a falling Impression Share with an unchanged budget looks like a campaign problem but isn't.

For Agencies

Approach the client on this topic before they do. The numbers in the Merchant Center are visibly falling without any changes having been made to the campaign or feed. And expect clients to come up with the idea of switching CSS on their own because idealo is displayed there. This is the conversation you should prepare for.

Check which reportings are now incorrect. Any dashboard that combines organic listings and ads into a single Shopping metric will show a slump starting from the changeover, which will be misread as a campaign problem.

Separate three things in your advice that are currently being confused: paid delivery via a Comparison Shopping Service, organic visibility on your own pages, and commercial presence on price comparison portals. These are three channels with three mechanisms and three cost structures.

For niche ranges and brand searches, a dedicated approach is worthwhile. Anyone running their own Comparison Shopping Service with search-engine-optimised product pages can appear in the new space with their own page, provided at least two offers per product can be shown. For agencies with portfolios in niches, this is an approach that can be tested, not a standard lever.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Google Shopping disappeared from EU search? No. What has disappeared are the embedded product grids and the Shopping tab. In their place is a section in which each Comparison Shopping Service gets its own expandable box. Google Shopping is one of these boxes.

Are the free product listings gone? The product listings that linked directly to the shop no longer appear in this space. What is shown there now are product pages from comparison services with multiple offers. The space was therefore taken over, but not by an equivalent replacement. Organic reach via product knowledge panels, image search, and, in one layout variant, via a separate merchant block remains.

Is the new space paid? No. It is not marked as sponsored and replaces the organic product space. The paid Shopping ads continue to exist alongside it unchanged.

Do I get in there if I switch to a large Comparison Shopping Service? No. The space is populated organically, based on the quality of the product pages of the respective comparison service. And the large price comparison portals do not populate their pages from the Google Merchant Center, but through their own merchant relationships and affiliate programs. A CSS switch will not achieve this.

How do I get onto idealo, billiger.de, and comparable portals then? Through their own onboarding processes, usually via an affiliate program or direct contract, with separate integration and separate costs. There is no setting for this in Google products. And if you appear there, their page ranks, not yours.

Can I appear in this space with my own CSS? It is possible. The prerequisites are your own search-engine-optimised product pages and at least two displayable offers per product so that the page functions as a comparison page. For exclusive products, this can be solved using offers from other merchants for the same product, matched via GTIN. Realistically, this applies primarily to niche products and brand/model searches, not highly competitive generic terms.

Am I still in the Google Shopping tab with a Comparison Shopping Service? Yes. The changeover has not altered this, as far as and where the tab appears. Additionally, the delivery of paid Shopping ads continues to run unchanged via a CSS.

Who decides which box is expanded at the top? This is unknown. The decision defines the standard for the space, not the mechanism of its allocation. Because the space is organic, the answer probably lies in the organic evaluation of the product pages. In our observations, the top box was Google once and a third party once.

Does this only apply in the European Union? The change affects users in the European Economic Area, i.e., the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. What matters is where the search is conducted, not where the merchant is located. We have our own confirmations for Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

Is this the final state or a test? We consider the structure to be stable and the design to be a test. There is no announcement, some labels are not localised, the section heading and merchant block vary, and the deadline from the Commission's decision only ends around 21 September 2026.

Are paid Shopping ads also affected? Not so far. However, the Commission's decision objects to them on the same grounds as the organic space. Since Google has built twice rather than deleted, we consider a change there to be likely.

Will the Shopping tab return? A tab exclusively for Google's own inventory would be vulnerable again under Recital 253 of the decision. A return in its old form is therefore unlikely.

Where does the click on "& more prices" lead? To the offer overview of the respective comparison service, not directly to a merchant offer. This is the core of the difference to the previous product listings.

Chronology

• 10 November 2021 The General Court of the European Union decides in T-612/17 that participation in Google's Shopping Units makes competing comparison services customers instead of competitors.

• 2024 Layout drafts structurally corresponding to the state that has now gone live circulate as part of the Commission tests for DMA implementation.

• 10 September 2024 The European Court of Justice confirms the judgment in C-48/22 P.

• 23 July 2026 The European Commission finds a breach of Article 6(5) DMA and imposes a 460 million euro fine. Deadline for compliance: 60 calendar days.

• 8 September 2026 A coalition of European comparison services addresses an open letter to the Commission, objecting among other things to forced intermediate clicks.

• 8 September 2026 Google remodels travel search results in the European Economic Area.

• 12 September 2026 First reports: product grids, product carousels, and the Shopping tab no longer appear. No announcement by Google.

• 14 September 2026 We reproduce the new space in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy and identify it as an accordion with one box per comparison service.

• around 21 September 2026 End of the 60-day deadline.

Methodology and rating of robustness

Observations. Our own sightings of the search results page in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, documented with screenshots, across several transactional search queries. We do not claim completeness across all markets, devices, or query types. The description of the space is proven, the statements about its prevalence are not.

Data. The mentioned decline is based on organic impressions and clicks from the Merchant Centers we manage in the first few days after the changeover. With a window of this length, averages are susceptible to day-of-the-week effects and the influence of individual large accounts. We therefore only specify an order of magnitude and deliberately refrain from a breakdown by country, product group, or account size. We will publish a robust evaluation as soon as a window of at least four weeks is available.

What we do not publish. No absolute figures, no click prices, no advertising budgets, no turnovers, no merchant or account names, no individual account values. Evaluations are carried out exclusively on an aggregate basis. Clients who do not wish to have their data included in future evaluations can let us know at any time.

What constitutes interpretation. Marked as such in the text are: the assessment that this is a test; the expectation of a change in the paid space; and the assumption that the position of the boxes is determined organically. Everything else is either visible in the screenshots or proven by the Commission's decision.

Sources

Primary Sources

• European Commission, Implementing Decision C(2026) 5358 final of 23 July 2026, proceedings DMA.100193, Alphabet, online search engine Google Search, Article 6(5) DMA. Used in text: Recitals 75 to 78, 89, 93 to 119, 209 to 260, 707 to 715 as well as Articles 1 to 4 of the operative part. 

• General Court of the European Union, judgment of 10 November 2021, T-612/17, particularly Recital 351. 

• European Court of Justice, judgment of 10 September 2024, C-48/22 P.

• Open letter from a coalition of European Comparison Shopping Services to the European Commission of 8 September 2026, eleven signatories. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10is1bKfw8mO5WFN9HcbfZqZkqx_kTd83zf39qenM_2g/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.hpygx7yden6l

Reporting

• SEO Südwest, Christian Kunz, 13 September 2026. https://www.seo-suedwest.de/10957-google-shopping-von-suchergebnissen-fast-komplett-verschwunden-teil-der-anpassung-in-eu.html

• Reuters, statement by a Google representative on search quality in Europe, September 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/google-warns-lower-quality-it-revamps-europe-search-results-avoid-eu-fines-2026-09-08/

Our Own Survey

• Label Up SERP observations and Merchant Center metrics, as of 14 September 2026