Google has provides some good news to the merchants as they would be able to sell their products directly on Google Shopping without having to pay any charges now as Google has made some changes to its merchant programs.

The merchants were required to pay per click previously but the exact costs for that were not fixed. There were no specifications on the minimum part but Google had in place a maximum for ad spent and the ads could only be displayed once their ads had reached the maximum spending on them. now, Google has started a section on the Google Shopping tab as ‘Free product listing’ which will contain all products listed by merchants for no additional costs.

This news was confirmed by Bill Ready, Google’s President of Commerce adding that the existing Google Merchant Center and Shopping Ads would automatically be enrolled in the new program. The onboarding for the new Merchant Center users would start shortly. The changes will first apply to United States merchants and then would be expanded globally in the coming months.

The major Internet giant is in talks with PayPal to allow merchants to link their accounts to speed up the process of onboarding and to improve search quality. Google is also working closely with other shopping platform partners such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce in this regard.

An encouraging step for small retailers and SMBs

As per Liz Miller, Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, this would come as a shot in the arm for the SMBs and Smaller retailers and they “can potentially list more products without fear of running up the cost,” adding that it also “helps expand the size and scope of Google’s marketplace, adding more opportunity for discovery and delight, which is certainly a perk of browsing broad search terms on something like Amazon”.

This will help Google expand the base to upsell into showcase shopping ads and get more engagement-based premium ads in the future. She also mentioned that it is a good way to bring more opportunities in a sector that had started to lag revenue-wise.

“As Google was seeing more opportunity in their cost per engagement models across things like Showcase, you had a situation where more house ads were taking up residence in the Listings,” she said. “Why not open up, increase the perceived size of your virtual mall, and expand the sales opportunity by approaching these new listings in the marketplace with ways to make their placement deliver even better results?”