Free listings for products

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If you're looking for information about free listings in the classic Merchant Center experience, click here.

Free listings are a great way to generate traffic to your online store and promote your business without having to pay for advertising.

How it works

With a free listing, the products you sell can appear at no cost on Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, the Shopping tab, Google Images, and Google Lens. Free listings for products helps your product pages appear in search results, not other pages like homepages, shipping and return policies, or product category pages.

In most cases, the Free listings feature is turned on by default for you, and you can view and change the status on the Free listings page in Merchant Center Next. Free listings apply for both online and in-store products.

If you're a Marketplace MCA, you can turn on free listings for all of your sub-accounts in the Free Listing tab. Any changes you make will have an impact on all your sub-accounts. However, if the setting is edited at the sub-account level, this setting is the one that takes priority over the one chosen in the Marketplace MCA.

Note: The status on the Free listings page controls permission to show products for free across Google, but doesn't guarantee that your products will be shown to customers. We rely on the data that you provide to us to match your products with what customers might be searching for.

Eligibility

Requirements

Follow our policies for showing products for free across Google.
Add your return policy information to your website to show information about returns next to your products. Your return policy may affect whether or not a customer decides to purchase a product from you.
- We recommend adding your return policy in Merchant Center.
Set up “Shipping” settings or add shipping costs using the shipping [shipping] attribute to product data. This gives customers access to important information about shipping for the products they may want to purchase from you.

Note: You’re required to set up “Shipping” settings or add shipping costs using the shipping [shipping] attribute in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Recommendations

It’s important to keep your Merchant Center account up to date and provide high-quality information so that your customers have a positive experience. These can affect if your products show up for free on Google.

The most important factor of a free listing is creating high-quality content that your audience will find valuable. Create content that is informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience.
Use relevant keywords and phrases throughout your content so that it'll be more likely to show up in search results. Follow our SEO guidelines to improve the visibility of your website on Google and to provide a good customer experience.
If you work with a third-party platform to show, promote, or sell your products across Google, link your Merchant Center account with the third-party platform.
If applicable, link your Merchant Center account to your existing Business Profile.
Match your product data in Merchant Center with your online store to ensure customers view the same information, such as prices, across both.

Note: Your products aren’t guaranteed to show across Google, as we rely on the data you provide to us to match your products with what customers might be searching for.

Add your product details

New accounts

When you create a new Merchant Center account, you're opted in to free listings by default. See the section below about providing the required product attributes.

Existing accounts

If you already have an existing Merchant Center account with product data uploaded, you may already be showing products for free on Google. You can confirm by checking the Free listings page in Merchant Center:

In your Merchant Center account, under the “Marketing method” section, click Free listings in the left navigation menu.
Check your current status.

Partners

If your account was created through a partner, then your product data was added to your Merchant Center using the Content API. Any changes with your product data will need to be done through your partner portal or discussed with your partner.

Other ways your product details are used when showing your products for free on Google

Google may still show the following information across Google, even if you turn off a free listing:

Content from your online store: Products and their details that have been crawled on your online store can show up on Google. This can occur even if the information hasn’t been marked up using schema.org or added in Merchant Center. This is done to ensure that customers are able to view a wide variety of products from a broad group of retailers when they search for information on Google. You can control how your products appear and stop showing them at any time by implementing crawl and indexing controls.
Content from Merchant Center: Google may still use and display certain products and their details you add, for example, titles and images, as described in the Merchant Center terms of service.

Provide the required product attributes

The product details you add using these attributes is our foundation for showing your products for free on Google. You can reference the "Needs attention" tab on the "Products" page in Merchant Center to identify any issues with the product details you add. Learn more about Product data specification.

Note: If you’re using structured data markup on your online store, click into each attribute in the table below to find the corresponding schema.org attribute name. For troubleshooting, check the errors in Search Console to make sure you’ve added the markup correctly.

Most of the following attributes are required to show your products for free on Google:

Attribute	Additional details
Id `[id]`	Required For all products.
Title `[title]`	Required For all products.
Link `[link]`	Required For all products.
Image link `[image_link]`	Required For all products. Ensure that the image is large enough and doesn’t contain promotional content to avoid disapproval.
Price `[price]`	Required For all products. If you include specific prices for the price attribute, any price drops based on the running historical average of your product’s pricing may appear in your listings. Learn more about the price `[price]` attribute.
Description `[description]`	Required For all products.
Availability `[availability]`	Required For all products.
Condition `[condition]`	Required For each used or refurbished product.
Brand `[brand]`	Required For each product with a clearly associated brand or manufacturer.
Gtin `[gtin]`	Required For all products with a GTIN assigned by the manufacturer. Match your product information with the most relevant queries. Learn more about unique product identifiers.
Mpn [`mpn]`	Required For all products without a GTIN. Match your product information with the most relevant queries. Learn more about unique product identifiers.
Multipack `[multipack]`	Required If your product is a multipack. Indicate if your product consists of multiple, identical products grouped as one product (“10 pairs of white cotton socks”).
Bundle `[is_bundle]`	Required If your product is a bundle.
Color `[color]`	Required For Apparel & Accessories Submit the primary color of your product. If your product has variations by color, use the Item group ID `[item_group_id]` attribute to submit each of your variants by color.
Size `[size]`	Required For Apparel & Accessories Specify the standardized size of your product. If your product has variations by size, use the Item group ID `[item_group_id]` attribute to submit each of your variants by size.
Age group `[age_group]`	Required For Apparel & Accessories Indicate which demographic your product is designed for. This attribute is used in combination with the gender `[gender]` attribute to help ensure customers see the correct size information.
Gender `[gender]`	Required For Apparel & Accessories Specify which gender your product is designed for, or submit “unisex” if no gender is specified. We use gender in combination with size `[size]` and age group `[age_group]` attributes to standardize sizing and departments that are shown to customers (for example, a t-shirt with “male” and “kids” indicated for the gender and age group could be used to display a “boys t-shirt”).
Item group ID `[item_group_id]`	Required For product variants. Use this attribute to group product variants together in your data.
Shipping `[shipping]`	Required For overriding your account shipping settings in Merchant Center. Learn how to Manage your shipping settings.
Tax `[tax]`	Required For overriding your account tax settings in Merchant Center.
Pattern `[pattern]`	Recommended only for `Apparel & Accessories` Use this to describe the pattern or graphic print on your product. If your product has variations by pattern, use the item group ID attribute to submit each of your variants by pattern.
Material `[material]`	Recommended only for `Apparel & Accessories` Indicate the primary materials used in your product, as customers often search for products by material (for example, “leather jackets”).
Additional image link `[additional_image_link]`	Recommended Provide up to 10 additional images per product to help customers see different views of your product, in addition to the required image link `[image_link]` attribute.
Size type `[size_type]` Size system `[size_system]`	Recommended only for `Apparel & Accessories` Further specify the standardized size of your product in addition to size `[size]`.
Link in Google Search Index `[canonical_link]`	Recommended for all products Help Google match your product data with user queries by associating your products with the correct URL in Google’s Search index. If not used, the URL provided in the link `[link]` or mobile link `[mobile_link]` feed attribute may be indexed.

Track your results

It's important to track the results of your free listing efforts so that you can check what works and what doesn't. You can do this easily on the Performance page in Merchant Center by filtering results for free listings. Learn how you can track your performance in Merchant Center.

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