Daily Marketing News, September 19, 2026: Google removed free product listings in Europe

The tool is called Video Ads Dubbing and lives in Asset Studio, the section of the Google Ads account where uploaded files are turned into creatives and edited for different formats. It works like this: you take a finished spot, the speech in it is translated and re voiced, the output covers 33 languages and locales, so one shoot turns into dozens of local versions with no studio and no voice actors. Access is still selective, and for the accounts that have it the feature is free. Previously this was an internal Google capability, first spotted in October 2025. In its promo materials Google cites an 86% lift in click through rate and a 75% drop in cost per click, but those are its own examples, not a promise of results. The update was first noticed by Google Ads trainer Jyll Saskin Gales.

The document is called "About commerce audience sharing through Google Ads". It works like this: the commerce partner, that is a retailer or marketplace, hands the advertising partner, that is a brand or seller, segments of its own shopper data. The brand can mix them with its own data and run campaigns in supported commerce media types, that is advertising inside retail platforms. The main limit: a campaign built on the retailer's audience can only drive traffic to that retailer's site, not to the brand's site, and access settings stay on the retailer's side. For a manufacturer this is a way to buy advertising on someone else's shopper data, but the order and the customer stay with the retailer.

Discover is the feed of recommended material in the Google app and on the mobile start page, and for media and blogs it is a major traffic source. Today tapping a card takes you to the publisher's site. In the test the "Dive deeper" button opens a short AI generated overview of the topic, labelled as AI made and possibly wrong, with links to articles, community reactions and original sources placed inside that overview. Robby Stein of Google posted about the experiment on Friday evening: they are starting with video and promise to try several layouts over the coming weeks. For anyone living on Discover traffic the risk is direct: the reader gets the gist inside Google and may never reach the site.

This is an update to the policy for sites with adult content, which now has a separate section, "For Google Shopping features". Flagging is done with the adult attribute in the Merchant Center feed, the account where a store uploads products for product listings and shopping ads, or with the hasAdultConsideration structured data on the product page, if the product falls under Google's adult content policy. Google specifically notes that the flag itself does not affect the site's visibility in regular organic results. This affects 18 plus stores and any product pages in that category: it used to be a recommendation, now a missing flag counts as a policy violation.

Product reviews are a separate data source in Merchant Center: they power the stars and ratings shown on Google's product listings. The documentation used to state plainly that the API was not supported for this source, so the file had to be fetched on a schedule or uploaded manually. The wording has now changed to adding reviews via the API, meaning a store can push fresh reviews automatically from its own system. The practical benefit for a seller is one thing: ratings on listings stop lagging reality by the gap between uploads. Google named no conditions, limits or full rollout date, the edit was spotted by Search Engine Roundtable.

Search Engine Roundtable reported this on 18 September 2026: the blocking hits scrapers collecting data for AI training, results page scrapers, and third party rank tracking tools. It coincided with two reversals in search results recorded on 4 and 12 September 2026, and with Google cutting off non human behaviour in search over recent months. The same day Barry Schwartz described how Bing has also started asking some users to confirm they are not a robot before showing results: with Google such checks are already common. For a site owner this means one thing: data in rank tracking services may become patchy and broken, and comparing reports across weeks in the near term needs that caveat, rather than explaining the swings by what your SEO did.

AI Mode is a separate Google mode where instead of a list of links you get an expanded AI answer with follow up questions. The entry button already exists almost everywhere, including the Google homepage, but on the results page you had to go looking for it, and now it is being built into the search box itself, so you can switch to the AI answer without going back. This is a test, Google named no timing or coverage. The meaning for anyone getting traffic from search is simple: the closer the button is to the search box, the more queries go into the mode where there are fewer links to sites.

These are the blocks Google built into its results to comply with the Digital Markets Act: one shows aggregators and comparison services, the other shows direct service providers such as hotels or airlines. Google updated the documentation for both units and added wording about local businesses: on queries tied to a place, ordinary local companies can now appear there too. For service sites and local businesses in Europe this is a new entry point into search results that did not exist before. Google gave no selection criteria or examples, the edit was reported by Search Engine Roundtable.