Google results in Europe: where the clicks went

Product carousels in Google search on commercial queries in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands dropped between 90% and 100% on 16 and 17 September 2026. That is data from Hugo Huijer of Productrise for countries where he has enough observations, and the same drop shows up in Semrush Sensor, a tool that tracks changes in search results. On 18 September 2026 Ginny Marvin, Google's ads liaison, confirmed on LinkedIn that free product listings have been removed in the European Economic Area because of a Digital Markets Act decision. Below I go through what disappeared, who took the freed up space, which new blocks Google opened for Europe only, and what to check in Search Console in an hour.

What disappeared from European search results on 18 September 2026

Free product listings are organic product cards with an image, a price and the shop name. They appeared in Google search above the regular blue links, and you could get in for free through a product feed in Merchant Center, Google's free dashboard for shops. In the European Economic Area they are gone now.

The carousel product formats went with them, those horizontal "popular products" strips on queries like "running shoes" or "robot vacuum". By Hugo Huijer's calculations, the drop in the five countries ran between 90% and 100%, meaning the block vanished almost entirely rather than losing part of its impressions.

The starting point matters here. Before 16 September 2026 a shop with zero ad budget could get clicks from the product block just by maintaining a feed. After 18 September 2026 that channel is closed in the European Economic Area, and the traffic that used to flow through it has been redistributed.

1. 6 March 2024the Digital Markets Act came into force
2. 9 September 2026Google rebuilt the structure of search results in Europe
3. 16 and 17 September 2026product carousels in 5 EEA countries dropped between 90% and 100%
4. 18 September 2026Google confirmed the removal of free product listings

Why Google did this: the Digital Markets Act and its demand on search results

The Digital Markets Act is the European law on digital markets. It has applied since 6 March 2024 and it bans large platforms from giving priority to their own services inside their own products. For search that means one simple thing: Google Shopping cannot sit above third party services just because it belongs to Google.

Free product listings were exactly the shop window of Google's own shopping service. Removing them is easier than proving to a regulator that they are neutral. According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google called the changes required by the DMA the biggest degradation of its search quality in its history. Strong wording, but it explains the logic: the company is not improving results, it is bringing them into line with a European Commission decision.

From that follows a forecast I would work with: this is not a one off edit. Google was already rebuilding the structure of European search results from 9 September 2026 to meet regulatory requirements, and a second wave landed 9 days later. So checking your own queries in the EU makes sense once a week, not once a quarter.

Who took the freed up slots: price comparison services

Google Ads freelancer Adriaan Dekker recorded on 18 September 2026 that the space freed up in product results in the European Economic Area is going to price comparison services (CSS), also called vertical shopping services (VSS). A CSS is a third party price comparison service: it shows products inside Google's product blocks, and for a shop it works as an intermediary between the feed and the search results.

For an online shop the setup changes like this. Before, you could get into the product block on your own and for free. Now the route runs through a partner: you hand your feed to a price comparison service and it places your products in the block. There is no direct free path into that format in Europe anymore.

If your European traffic rested on product listings, count the loss honestly: take clicks on product queries for the 14 days before 16 September 2026 and the 14 days after, and compare clicks, not positions. The position may even have improved, because your organic link moved up into the spot the block used to occupy.

Which new blocks Google opened for Europe only

In exchange, Google described a set of formats that exist only in the European Economic Area. The help document "Regional differences in Search experience" on Google Search Central lists them and names the audience outright: vertical search services, price comparison services, direct suppliers and content providers. The European list has 5 formats in total.

• Aggregator unit, a visibility block for aggregators and comparison sites on the results page. It covers 5 query types: hotels, flights, ground transport, local business, products.
• Supplier unit, the same block but for direct suppliers of the service: hotels themselves, airlines, shops. The same 5 query types.
• Ecosystem carousel, a carousel next to the answer where data and interactivity are needed: weather, sports, finance, translation. For example, a stock chart or a match score.
• Job sites features, a separate "Job sites" carousel and a refinement chip with links to job aggregators, working on job related queries.
• Structured data carousels in beta, a horizontally scrollable block with items from one site, also known as a host carousel. The condition for taking part is structured data markup. For Europe it supports hotels, local business, things to do (that is, what to do in a city), products, ground transport, flights, vacation rentals.

For comparison: the "Places sites" carousel with a refinement chip for aggregators works only in Turkey, it does not exist in Europe, and the badge and refinement chip for companies registered in the country were built by Google for South Africa. So the set of blocks differs from country to country, and there is no universal solution for all markets.

What changed for local business on 18 September 2026

On 18 September 2026 Google updated the documentation for the aggregator unit and the supplier unit and added the local query format to both. The help wording reads: "aggregator unit and supplier unit now support local business queries". Before that update, local queries, meaning searches for a cafe, a repair shop or a salon nearby, were covered by neither block. You can check the difference against the archived copy of those same pages from 13 September 2026 in the Wayback Machine.

The update also added a line about the Local Point of Interest Feed, a feed with data on physical locations: addresses, opening hours, coordinates. Without it, local queries will not be picked up in those blocks, markup on the site alone is not enough.

The practical meaning for the owner of a chain of locations or a local aggregator: a visibility channel appeared that did not exist on 17 September 2026. It does not replace the local pack with maps, but it gives a second slot in search results that you can occupy if your data is submitted in the right format.

How to check your European traffic in Search Console

Search Console is Google's free dashboard for site owners. You need the "Performance" report, the "Countries" tab and a comparison of two date ranges. Step by step:

1. Open "Performance" and turn on period comparison: 26 August to 8 September 2026 against 10 to 23 September 2026. Two windows of 14 days, with both waves of changes in between.
2. Go to the "Countries" tab and export the rows for European Economic Area countries. Look separately at Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands: for those 5 countries the carousel drop is confirmed by Productrise data.
3. Turn on the "Clicks", "Impressions", "CTR" and "Position" columns. Look for rows where the position improved and the clicks fell: that is a sign you moved up in organic results but lost your slot in the product block.
4. On the "Search Appearance" tab compare the same two periods by result type. If you had product results, that row will collapse.
5. Filter queries by commercial markers ("buy", "price", model names) and look at the click change for those separately. Informational queries should be calmer than commercial ones.

I keep the comparison in one table with 4 columns: country, clicks before, clicks after, difference in percent. Sorting by the last column immediately shows where the loss is real and where it is noise on 20 clicks.

The paid side is worth a separate look. On 12 September 2026 a Google test was spotted showing a countdown to the end of a promotion inside ads. If it rolls out, competition for attention on the first screen will grow even harder, and in that case the click share of the organic link below the blocks shrinks again.

The scale of the loss is visible in the Productrise database: historically around 85% of tracked commercial queries, German ones included, showed at least one organic product carousel, and in the affected European Economic Area countries that figure collapsed to almost zero in a couple of days. As of 17 September 2026 Hugo Huijer put the drop in product carousel impressions at roughly 95% and allowed that it could reach 100% as the rollout continues.

What to do in an hour

• Export clicks by European Economic Area country from Search Console for 26 August to 8 September 2026 and for 10 to 23 September 2026 and calculate the difference in percent for each country.
• Single out the queries where the position improved and the clicks fell: those are the ones where the product block left, not you.
• If you run a shop with European traffic, settle the question of a price comparison service: without one there is no slot in the product block in Europe anymore.
• If you have offline locations or a local services aggregator, put preparing a Local Point of Interest Feed on the plan: local queries in the aggregator unit and the supplier unit opened on 18 September 2026.
• Check structured data on product, hotel, venue and service pages: structured data carousels in beta only work on markup.
• Schedule a weekly check of search results for your 10 main European queries: between 9 and 18 September 2026 Google changed European results twice.

• click comparison across 5 EEA countries
• list of queries with rising position and falling clicks
• decision on a CSS for the product feed
• Local Point of Interest Feed on the plan
• markup on product pages
• weekly check of search results

The next checkpoint is the first week of October 2026: by then 14 days of data after 18 September will have accumulated, and it will be clear whether the click drop stayed put or the organic link won back part of what was lost.