TL;DR
- Google removed free product listings and 'popular products' carousels from search across the European Economic Area, with a near-total drop within two days, reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 18 September 2026.
- Data cited showed roughly 90 to 100 percent drops in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands, and Ginny Marvin confirmed it as a Digital Markets Act compliance step.
- The space is going to comparison shopping services; paid Shopping ads are untouched, so the routes to product visibility are now CSS or paid placement.
- Thailand is outside the EEA and the DMA, so free product listings and carousels remain in Thai results and no action is needed.
- Google did not say whether an organic format will return, quantify the traffic effect, or indicate whether other markets could see the same change.
Google has removed free product listings and the "popular products" carousels from search results across the European Economic Area, and the drop was close to total within two days. Search Engine Roundtable reported the change on 18 September 2026. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed the removal is a Digital Markets Act compliance step, and the space those free listings occupied is going to comparison shopping services instead.
This is a European change, not a global one, and Thailand is not affected. But it is a large, concrete example of how regulation is reshaping the shopping results Google shows, and the direction is worth understanding for any retailer that depends on organic product visibility.
What was removed, and how fast
The free product listings and carousel formats are gone from the EEA. These are the organic product blocks, the "popular products" carousels, that appear for commercial queries without an advertiser paying for them. According to data cited by Search Engine Roundtable, the disappearance was near-complete within two days.
| Detail | What the source reported |
|---|---|
| What was removed | Free product listings and "popular products" carousels, the organic product blocks on commercial queries. |
| Where | The European Economic Area, under the Digital Markets Act. |
| Scale of the drop | Around 90 to 100 percent in countries with sufficient data, including Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands. |
| Who confirmed it | Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liaison, confirmed the DMA-driven removal. |
| What fills the space | Comparison shopping services, also called vertical shopping services. |
Hugo Huijer of Productrise plotted the fall and reported that over two days the popular-products carousels almost entirely disappeared from EEA search, with drops of roughly 90 to 100 percent in the countries he had enough data for. A separate check against Semrush data showed the same pattern for those regions. Google itself has previously called this kind of change the biggest reduction in its search quality ever, and it documented the regional differences in a dedicated document.
Why Google did this
The removal is not a ranking update or a product decision Google made for quality reasons. It is compliance with the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission rule that restricts how large gatekeepers can self-preference their own services in results. Free product listings that Google places itself are exactly the kind of self-preferencing the DMA targets, so Google removed them in the EEA rather than keep defending them.
The winners, in the short term, are the comparison shopping services, the vertical shopping services that aggregate product offers. The space that Google's own free listings held is being handed to them, which is the outcome the DMA was designed to produce: give independent intermediaries a share of the results a gatekeeper used to keep for itself.
What it means for retailers in the EEA
For a retailer selling into Europe, the practical effect is that a source of free, organic product visibility in Google Search has largely vanished, and the routes to that visibility now run through comparison shopping services or through paid Shopping ads. A merchant that relied on appearing in the popular-products carousel for commercial queries has lost that placement and needs another path to the same shoppers.
That path is either a CSS, which now holds the space, or paid placement. The change does not remove Shopping ads; it removes the free organic block that sat alongside them. So the likely medium-term effect is more competition for the paid and CSS-mediated routes that remain, because the demand that used to be partly served by free listings still exists.
Where Thailand stands
Thailand is outside the EEA and outside the DMA, so free product listings and the popular-products carousels remain in Thai search results as before. Nothing about a Thai merchant's Google Shopping presence changes because of this, and there is no action to take today.
The reason it still matters here is direction. Regulation in one large market is now materially changing what Google shows, and the pattern, moving organic product visibility toward intermediaries and leaving paid routes intact, is the kind of shift that tends to travel. A Thai retailer does not need to react, but should understand that free organic product visibility is a channel that regulators can compress, and that a healthy presence should not depend on any single Google-owned free surface. The durable position is a strong product feed and a direct store presence that pays off across Shopping, organic, and increasingly AI surfaces, rather than reliance on one free block that a rule can remove in two days. Teams building that base can work it through their e-commerce marketing and Shopify SEO programmes so the feed and the store are strong wherever Google routes shoppers next.
What a comparison shopping service is, and the route that remains
Because the freed space is going to comparison shopping services, it helps to be clear on what a CSS is. A comparison shopping service is an independent platform that lists product offers from many retailers and links shoppers through to buy. In Europe this is not new: since an earlier Commission ruling, Shopping ads in the EEA have run through CSS partners rather than directly through Google, so a merchant either uses Google's own CSS or signs up with a third-party CSS to place product ads. What has changed now is that the free organic block sitting beside those ads is gone, so the CSS route carries more of the weight.
It is worth knowing that Google runs its own CSS alongside the independent ones, and a merchant can use that or a third-party CSS, each with its own fee structure and margin. With the free listings gone, the choice between them stops being a formality and becomes a cost lever, because it now shapes a larger share of how a retailer reaches shoppers on commercial queries in Europe.
For an EEA retailer, the practical implication is to treat CSS choice as a real decision rather than a default. Different CSS partners charge differently and manage bids differently, and with the free listings removed, the efficiency of the CSS a merchant runs through now matters more to how cheaply it can reach shoppers. A merchant that had drifted along on free listings plus a default CSS setup should review both, because one of those two pillars has just been taken away and the other is now doing more of the job.
What Google did not say
The reporting leaves some things open. Google confirmed the removal but did not detail whether any organic product format will return to the EEA in a different, DMA-compliant shape, or whether the removal is permanent. It did not quantify the effect on merchant traffic or on comparison shopping service traffic, only the disappearance of the carousels themselves. And it did not indicate whether similar regulatory pressure in other markets could lead to the same change elsewhere, which is the question retailers outside Europe would most want answered.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly did Google remove in the EEA?
Free product listings and the "popular products" carousels, the organic product blocks that appear on commercial queries without an advertiser paying. Data cited by Search Engine Roundtable showed them dropping by roughly 90 to 100 percent across EEA countries within two days, and Ginny Marvin confirmed the removal as a Digital Markets Act step.
Why did Google do this?
It is compliance with the Digital Markets Act, which restricts how large gatekeepers self-preference their own services in results. Google's own free product listings are the kind of self-preferencing the DMA targets, so Google removed them in the EEA rather than continue defending them.
Does this affect Shopping ads?
No. The change removed the free organic product block, not paid Shopping ads. The space is going to comparison shopping services, and the likely effect is more competition for the paid and CSS-mediated routes that remain, since the shopper demand still exists.
Is this happening in Thailand?
No. Thailand is outside the European Economic Area and the Digital Markets Act, so free product listings and popular-products carousels remain in Thai search results. There is no change to a Thai merchant's Shopping presence and no action to take today.
Could it spread to other markets?
Google did not say. The change is DMA-specific for now, but the pattern of moving organic product visibility toward intermediaries while leaving paid routes intact is the kind of regulatory outcome that can travel, which is why retailers elsewhere should not over-rely on any single free Google surface.
The bottom line
Google has erased free product listings from European search almost overnight to satisfy the Digital Markets Act, handing that space to comparison shopping services and leaving paid Shopping intact. It does not touch Thailand, and no Thai merchant needs to act. What it demonstrates is that free organic product visibility is a channel a regulator can compress in two days, so the resilient strategy everywhere is a strong feed and a direct store presence that performs across every route Google might send shoppers down, not dependence on a single free block.
