SEO

Google Shopping Still Dominates EU Product Results After the DMA Changes

Google Shopping still runs the product results in Europe, even after the changes the Digital Markets Act forced on it. BrightEdge data reported by Search Engine Roundtable on November 6, 2026 shows the Google Shopping box appearing 16 to 35 times as often as the next-largest service in Spain, Italy, France and Germany. The gap is not close, and it is not a quirk of one market: across four of Europe's biggest economies, Google's own shopping unit dominates the product results by an order of magnitude. For anyone who hoped the DMA would level the field, the numbers are a cold answer.

Shopping still dominates the product box

The BrightEdge figures are stark because they cover four countries at once. In Spain, Italy, France and Germany, the Google Shopping box shows up between 16 and 35 times as often as the next-largest service — a range that suggests the dominance holds everywhere, even if its exact size varies by market. This is the result the DMA's shopping rules were meant to prevent: a search page where one provider's product unit crowds out the rest before a shopper has even scrolled.

The context makes the numbers more striking. Google dropped its free product listings in Europe under the DMA, a change it called the biggest reduction in search quality in its history — a deliberate downgrade, in Google's telling, imposed by regulation. Yet even after that change, its Shopping box remains the default product surface in the results. Whatever the DMA took away from Google's product offering, it did not take away its position.

Comparison sites get the scraps — but visible ones

The comparison shopping services the DMA was meant to help are visible, but only in the margins. BrightEdge found that 71 percent of Comparison Sites appearances land in the top four result positions — 61 percent in France, and 76 percent in both Spain and Italy. When a comparison site does appear, it usually appears high, which means the unit works when it is shown. The problem is how rarely it is shown at all compared with Google Shopping.

That split — high placement, low frequency — is the shape of a remedy that works in theory and underperforms in practice. A comparison site that reaches the top four has a genuine chance of the click, and the data shows those appearances are not buried at the bottom of the page. But a shopper who sees Google Shopping sixteen to thirty-five times for every one comparison-site appearance is still, in practice, shopping in Google's store. Visibility per appearance is not the same as visibility overall, and the DMA's critics will read these numbers as proof of that gap.

The DMA fines and the free-listings trade-off

The regulatory pressure has not gone away. The EU fined Google 460 million euros for self-preferencing in Search on July 23, 2026, part of 890 million euros in DMA fines. The fine is a reminder that the shopping results are not just a product-design question but a legal one, and that Brussels is willing to attach very large numbers to its view of how the page should look. For Google, the cost of the current layout is now measured in hundreds of millions of euros as well as in market share.

For SEOs and merchants, the practical takeaway is simpler than the legal one. In Europe's biggest markets, the Google Shopping box is still where product searches are won or lost, and the comparison-site unit is a secondary surface worth optimising for but not a replacement. Feed quality, pricing, and Shopping presence remain the levers that matter most for product visibility — and until the data says otherwise, that is where the effort should go.

Sources

Sources: Search Engine Roundtable, November 6, 2026; BrightEdge.

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