Google has removed free product listings and the “popular products” carousels from its search results across the European Economic Area, wiping out an unpaid discovery channel that European retailers had built strategies around since 2020. The removal happened between September 15 and 18, and Google’s Ads Liaison confirmed it followed from the Digital Markets Act. It lands days before September 21, the end of the 60-day compliance window the European Commission gave Google when it fined the company EUR 460 million (about USD 530 million at current rates) on July 23 for favoring its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results.
In short
- What vanished: free product listings, organic product carousels and the Shopping tab in Google’s main navigation across all 30 EEA countries; tracking data from Productrise shows drops of roughly 90 to 100 percent in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.
- Why now: the Commission’s July 23 non-compliance decision under the DMA ordered Google to stop self-preferencing in Search within 60 days, a deadline that falls on September 21, 2026.
- What replaces it: a “comparison sites” unit that lists third-party aggregators such as Redbrain, Shoparize and Bigshopper, plus a supplier unit for direct sellers with no live prices.
- What stays: paid Shopping ads, the comparison shopping service (CSS) program and Merchant Center feeds are untouched, so product visibility in Europe now runs through paid placement or an intermediary.
- What is at stake for Google: periodic penalty payments of up to 5 percent of average daily worldwide turnover per day if the Commission decides the changes still fall short.
What exactly did Google remove from European search results?
The change hit three surfaces at once. First, the organic product carousels that appeared on commercial queries, often labelled “popular products,” stopped rendering across the EEA. Second, free product listings inside the Shopping tab, the unpaid grid that Google opened to all Merchant Center accounts in 2020, disappeared. Third, the Shopping tab itself was pulled from the navigation bar under the search box, although the results page can still be reached by appending a URL parameter.
Hugo Huijer of Productrise, who tracks organic product carousel presence across thousands of daily queries, said the feature “fell off a cliff, dropping by roughly 90 to 100 percent in a matter of days” in the EEA countries where his data is dense enough to be confident. His baseline is instructive: before the change, about 85 percent of commercial queries in those markets showed an organic product carousel. Semrush data cited by Search Engine Roundtable showed the same pattern.
Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, confirmed the cause in a LinkedIn comment reported by Search Engine Roundtable on September 18. Google, she said, “removed the free product listings because of the DMA ruling in Europe.” There was no blog post, no Merchant Center notification and no transition period, according to PPC Land, which noted that retailers found out from their own traffic dashboards.
The features that survived.
Paid Shopping ads still run in every EEA country, and CSS partners still bid on them on behalf of merchants. Merchant Center accounts still ingest product feeds, and those feeds still power Shopping ads. What is gone is the free exposure that a well-maintained feed used to earn on its own. The UK, which left the EU and is outside the EEA, shows no change, and neither do the United States or Australia, per Productrise.
| Surface | Before September 15 | After September 18 | Who gains the space |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organic product carousel on commercial queries | Shown on about 85 percent of tracked commercial queries in DE, FR, BE, NL, SE | Removed, roughly 90 to 100 percent drop | “Comparison sites” unit listing aggregators |
| Free product listings in the Shopping tab | Open to all Merchant Center accounts since 2020 | Removed | Paid Shopping ads and CSS listings |
| Shopping tab in navigation | Visible on every results page | Removed from navigation, reachable via URL parameter | None, the entry point is gone |
| Direct seller attribution on product cards | Merchant name on each card | Removed in the new layout | Aggregators that list the merchant |
| Shopping ads (paid) | Running | Running, unchanged | Google Ads and CSS partners |
| Structured-data carousels (beta) | Limited test | Expanded eligibility for category pages with ItemList and Product markup | Retailers with clean schema markup |
Why did the Commission force this change under the DMA?
The legal trigger is Article 6(5) of the Digital Markets Act, which bars designated gatekeepers from ranking their own services more favorably than comparable third-party services and requires transparent, fair and non-discriminatory ranking conditions. Google Search was designated a gatekeeper service in September 2023. On March 25, 2024 the Commission opened a non-compliance investigation into Google’s self-preferencing measures, and on March 19, 2025 it sent Google preliminary findings that the company was in breach.
On July 23, 2026 the Commission adopted two non-compliance decisions. The first fined Google EUR 460 million (about USD 530 million) for giving its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results more prominent placement, enhanced visuals and filters that third-party services could not match. The second fined Google EUR 430 million (about USD 495 million) for anti-steering restrictions on Google Play, where the Commission found that the level and duration of Google’s steering-related fees went beyond what the DMA allows. The combined EUR 890 million is the largest DMA penalty package to date.
Both decisions carried a cease-and-desist order and a 60-day deadline. The Commission’s press release stated that Google “must implement measures to treat third-party services that feature on Google’s search results in a fair and non-discriminatory manner by reference to its own services,” and warned that failure to comply within 60 days risks periodic penalty payments. Sixty days from July 23 is September 21. Readers can consult the Commission’s decision summary for the full text.
A pattern that predates the DMA
Google’s shopping surfaces have been in Brussels’ crosshairs for more than a decade. The Commission’s 2017 Google Shopping decision, a EUR 2.42 billion antitrust fine for demoting rival comparison shopping services, was upheld by the Court of Justice in September 2024. That case produced the CSS program, under which comparison shopping services bid on Shopping ad slots on merchants’ behalf. Google has also lost its final appeal against the Android fine, as shopappy reported when the EUR 4.1 billion Android penalty was upheld in July. The DMA was written precisely to move enforcement from years-long antitrust cases to fixed obligations with 60-day clocks.
What did Google change on September 8, and why did it call it its worst downgrade ever?
The product-listing removal is the second act of a rollout that began on September 8, when Google published a redesigned EEA results layout and told Reuters that the changes mark the largest reduction in quality of service in Search’s 29-year history. Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice president for knowledge and information, said in a statement: “To comply with DMA requirements, we’re making significant changes to Search in Europe.” He added that the changes “degrade the user experience for Europeans, boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day.”
Search Engine Journal described the new layout from Google’s Search Central documentation. An aggregator unit displays results from eligible comparison services, online travel agencies and metasearch engines for hotel, flight, train, bus and product queries, with the top-ranked aggregator expanded by default to show pricing and ratings. A separate supplier unit shows direct providers such as hotels, airlines and individual businesses, but only when an aggregator unit is also present. Live prices were removed from the supplier carousel.
Google also claimed that earlier DMA changes had cut free direct-booking traffic to European businesses by 30 percent. The Next Web noted that Google has not published the underlying data, and the Commission has not confirmed the figure. As of September 20 no official Commission response to the September rollout has been reported.
From hotels to products in nine days
Most early coverage of the September 8 redesign focused on travel, because hotels and flights were the categories where Google’s own units had been most prominent. Productrise’s tracking shows the product side followed on September 15 and 16, when the organic carousels began to disappear, and by September 17 the Shopping tab had left the navigation bar. Kristian Kunz of SEO Südwest, quoted by Ecommerce News Europe, called the shift the elimination of a feature “many companies strategized around.”
How big is the loss for European retailers?
The free product listing program was never a dominant channel by revenue, but it was a meaningful one by reach. Because about 85 percent of commercial queries in the largest EEA markets showed an organic carousel, any merchant with a compliant feed had a shot at unpaid product exposure above the classic blue links. That exposure disappeared in a 72-hour window with no phase-out, so the loss shows up as an immediate step down in organic clicks in Merchant Center reports for EEA countries.
Ecommerce News Europe reported that organic Shopping visibility built by retailers has “disappeared within a very short period of time,” that being listed in Merchant Center is now “significantly less valuable,” and that smaller retailers will find it harder to gain visibility. The same report expects category pages to regain importance in organic search, because the structured-data carousel test now rewards well-marked-up category pages rather than individual product feeds.
Adriaan Dekker, a Dutch Google Shopping specialist quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, summed up the reallocation: “Free listings from Google Shopping look to be disappearing in the EEA. The space is going to price comparison services (CSS) instead.” That transfers margin from the retailer to the intermediary. Aggregators typically charge a commission or a cost-per-click to appear in their listings, and the merchant loses the direct attribution that used to sit on every product card. shopappy covered a related squeeze in the Merchant Center Content API sunset, which is already splitting merchants by how well they manage product data.
The traffic math for a mid-sized retailer
Consider a German electronics retailer that earned 8 percent of its non-brand organic sessions from free product listings and carousels. If those sessions convert at a typical 2 to 3 percent, the retailer must now replace the same revenue through Shopping ads, where a click in electronics categories commonly costs EUR 0.30 to EUR 1.00 in Germany, or through a CSS partner that takes a share of the click price. Industry estimates suggest the replacement cost lands between 4 and 10 percent of the previously free revenue, before any change in conversion rate. These are illustrative figures, not disclosed data, and the true number depends heavily on category.
What are the alternatives now: Shopping ads, CSS partners or marketplaces?
Retailers have three practical routes back to product visibility on Google in the EEA, and each has a price. The first is paid Shopping ads through Google Ads, which were never affected by the ruling. The second is a CSS partner, a comparison shopping service that lists the merchant’s products and bids on Shopping ad slots under the CSS program that grew out of the 2017 case. The third is to appear in the new “comparison sites” unit, which is the only free surface left, and which Google fills with aggregators rather than individual merchants.
The comparison sites unit is where the DMA’s logic becomes visible. Productrise identified Redbrain, Shoparize and Bigshopper among the aggregators appearing in it in the first days. These are exactly the comparison shopping services that the 2017 decision said Google had demoted, and the DMA is now giving them top-of-page placement by regulation. For a merchant, listing with several of them is the closest thing to the free exposure that just ended.
| Route | Cost to the merchant | Control over data and attribution | Availability after September 18 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Shopping ads (direct) | Cost per click, auction priced | Full control of feed, merchant name shown | Unchanged in all EEA countries |
| CSS partner listing | Commission or CPC share, typically discounted vs direct Google Ads spend | Shared, CSS name appears on the ad | Unchanged, likely to gain volume |
| “Comparison sites” unit (free) | None from Google, but aggregators charge for inclusion | Low, aggregator owns the click | New, replaces the organic carousel |
| Structured-data carousel (beta) | Engineering time for ItemList and Product markup | Full, links go to the merchant’s category page | Expanding, eligibility not guaranteed |
| Marketplaces (Amazon, Zalando, bol, Allegro) | Referral fees of roughly 8 to 15 percent | Low, marketplace owns the customer | Unchanged |
The marketplace route deserves a note. Sellers who lose Google exposure in Europe often shift more inventory to Amazon’s European stores, where the company is already tightening its own listing rules. shopappy has analyzed how Amazon’s Pan-EU FBA mandatory stores are expanding, and Bloomberg reported on September 18 that the Commission has also been questioning Amazon’s third-party sellers about price-parity restrictions under the DMA. A merchant that flees one gatekeeper’s rules can land in the middle of another gatekeeper’s compliance dispute.
How does the September 21 deadline work, and what happens if the Commission is not satisfied?
The 60-day clock in the July 23 decisions expires on September 21. The Commission does not issue an automatic verdict on that day. Instead, it assesses whether Google’s implemented measures bring the non-compliance to an end, and it can open a new proceeding to impose periodic penalty payments if it concludes they do not. Under the DMA, those payments are capped at 5 percent of average daily worldwide turnover for each day of continued non-compliance. On Alphabet’s reported 2025 revenue of roughly USD 400 billion, 5 percent of a day’s turnover is on the order of USD 55 million per day, an illustrative figure that depends on how the Commission calculates the base.
The Commission’s July press release signaled cautious approval of Google’s direction. It said Google had “proposed and started testing changes to how it presents its own services on Google Search for free services such as shopping, hotels and flights,” and called them “substantial progress towards compliance.” It also said it was “currently assessing” Google’s proposed changes to shopping ads and to content-related services such as sports, and that dialogue would continue on how the same principles apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode.
That last point matters for retailers. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode now surface product results with their own visual treatment. If the Commission extends the self-preferencing logic to those surfaces, the next removal could hit product answers inside AI results rather than the classic page. shopappy’s guide to an AI crawler policy for retailers covers how merchants decide what those systems may index.
Google’s options after the deadline
Google may appeal the July decisions to the General Court, and the press release notes that it “may decide to appeal.” An appeal does not suspend the compliance obligation. Google can also keep negotiating the shape of the remedy, as it did between March 2025 and July 2026. Given that the company has publicly framed the changes as a quality downgrade forced on it by regulators, the more likely path is compliance paired with public criticism, and a continued push in Washington against what the Trump administration has called discriminatory treatment of US technology firms.
How does this compare with other DMA enforcement actions?
The Google decisions are the third and fourth non-compliance fines under the DMA, which took full effect for gatekeepers in March 2024. The first two came in April 2025, when the Commission fined Apple EUR 500 million (about USD 575 million at current rates) for anti-steering rules in the App Store and Meta EUR 200 million (about USD 230 million) for its “consent or pay” advertising model. Google’s combined EUR 890 million (about USD 1.02 billion) is the largest package to date, though still far below the antitrust-era fines that ran into the billions.
| Gatekeeper | Decision date | Fine (EUR) | Fine (USD, approx. at 1.15) | Conduct | Remedy status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | April 2025 | 500 million | 575 million | App Store anti-steering | Terms revised, dispute ongoing |
| Meta | April 2025 | 200 million | 230 million | Consent-or-pay ads model | Model revised, assessment ongoing |
| Google (Search) | July 23, 2026 | 460 million | 530 million | Self-preferencing in Search | EEA redesign Sept 8, product listings removed Sept 15 to 18, deadline Sept 21 |
| Google (Play) | July 23, 2026 | 430 million | 495 million | Anti-steering on Google Play | Steering terms revised, “good progress” per Commission |
| Google Shopping (antitrust, pre-DMA) | June 2017 | 2.42 billion | 2.78 billion | Demoting rival comparison services | Upheld by Court of Justice, September 2024 |
Conversions use a rate of about USD 1.15 per euro, in line with the European Central Bank reference rate published on September 18. The comparison shows how the DMA has changed the economics of enforcement: the fines are smaller, but the remedies arrive in weeks and reshape product surfaces directly, whereas the 2017 case took seven years to reach a final judgment.
What does this mean for cross-border sellers and US brands selling into Europe?
US and UK merchants that sell into EEA countries through localized storefronts are affected in exactly the same way as domestic European retailers, because the change is tied to where the search is performed, not where the merchant is based. A US brand running a German-language Shopify store with a Merchant Center feed lost its free German listings on the same day as a Berlin retailer. Brands that rely on a European marketplace or a CSS partner for their EEA presence are less exposed, because those intermediaries are the ones the new layout promotes.
The timing compounds a year of new friction for cross-border sellers into Europe. The EUR 3 flat duty on low-value parcels has already halved the flow of small China-origin parcels into Belgium and the Netherlands, as shopappy reported in its analysis of the EU parcel duty and its effect on Temu and Shein volumes, and the Union Customs Code recast adopted this month will phase out the EUR 150 exemption entirely. Sellers whose European model was “cheap parcel plus free Google listing” have now lost both halves of that equation within a single year.
What US retailers should watch at home
There is no equivalent obligation in the United States, and Productrise confirmed that US product carousels are unchanged. But the DMA’s self-preferencing standard is increasingly cited in US litigation and state legislation, and Google’s US search remedies case remains on appeal. If a US court or Congress ever adopts a comparable non-discrimination rule for search, the EEA rollout is the template for what a compliant page looks like: aggregators first, direct sellers second, and no free product grid.
What should merchants do this week?
The first task is measurement. Merchants should segment Merchant Center performance reports by country and isolate EEA free-listing clicks from September 1 to September 20 to size the loss. The second task is a decision on paid replacement: whether to raise Shopping ad budgets directly, move part of the budget to one or more CSS partners, or accept the reduced visibility for low-margin categories. The third is technical: category pages that already carry ItemList and Product structured data are eligible for the beta carousel, which is the only route back to a merchant-owned free placement.
Productrise’s guidance is that the current layout is likely temporary, because Google is still in dialogue with the Commission about shopping ads, content services and AI surfaces. Ecommerce News Europe expects category pages to regain importance in organic rankings. Both point in the same direction: keep the feed clean, invest in the pages Google can still rank organically, and treat any free carousel placement as a bonus rather than a channel.
A checklist for the next 30 days
- Pull country-level Merchant Center free-listing clicks for August and September and log the step change by market.
- Quote at least two CSS partners on commission and click-share terms, and compare against a direct Google Ads Shopping campaign at the same budget.
- Audit category pages for valid ItemList and Product markup, and fix pricing, availability and image fields that fail validation.
- Check whether the brand appears in the aggregators now shown in the comparison sites unit, and register with the ones that carry the category.
- Revisit marketplace listings in Amazon, Zalando, bol and Allegro, since those channels are likely to absorb shoppers who no longer see product grids on Google.
- Diary September 21 and the following two weeks for any Commission statement, and watch for changes to AI Overviews product results in EEA countries.
Frequently asked questions
Did Google remove free product listings everywhere?
No. The removal applies to the European Economic Area, which is the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Productrise’s tracking shows no change in the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia.
Are Shopping ads affected?
No. Paid Shopping ads continue to run in every EEA country, and the CSS program under which comparison shopping services bid on those ads is unchanged. Only the unpaid surfaces, the free listings, organic carousels and the Shopping tab in navigation, were removed.
Why is the deadline September 21?
The Commission’s two non-compliance decisions of July 23, 2026 gave Google 60 days to end the conduct. Sixty days from July 23 is September 21. The Commission then assesses the measures and can seek periodic penalty payments if they fall short.
How large were the fines?
EUR 460 million (about USD 530 million) for self-preferencing in Search and EUR 430 million (about USD 495 million) for anti-steering on Google Play, a combined EUR 890 million. Both were announced on July 23, 2026.
What replaced the product carousel?
A “comparison sites” unit that lists third-party aggregators such as Redbrain, Shoparize and Bigshopper, and a supplier unit for direct sellers that appears only alongside an aggregator unit and shows no live prices. Google is also expanding a beta carousel built from structured data on retailers’ category pages.
Can I still reach the Shopping tab?
The tab was removed from the navigation bar, but Productrise notes the results page is still reachable by adding a URL parameter to a search. It no longer shows free product listings, however, so its value to merchants has collapsed.
Did Google say the changes make search worse?
Yes. Google told Reuters the September 8 redesign was the largest reduction in quality of service in Search’s 29-year history, and Nick Fox said the changes “degrade the user experience for Europeans.” Google also claimed a 30 percent drop in free direct-booking traffic from earlier DMA changes, a figure it has not backed with published data.
Could this happen to AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Possibly. The Commission’s July press release said it had taken note of Google’s proposals for applying the decision’s principles to AI Overviews and AI Mode and that dialogue would continue. Any extension of the self-preferencing rule to those surfaces would affect how products appear in AI results in the EEA.
What is the fastest way to recover lost visibility?
For most merchants, a combination of a direct Shopping ads budget and one or two CSS partners restores placement quickest, because those surfaces were untouched. Structured-data carousels on category pages are the only free, merchant-owned route, but eligibility is not guaranteed and the format is still in beta.