Google Search Central added a hub that lists which regional Search features exist in the European Economic Area, Türkiye, and South Africa, who qualifies for each, and how to take part.
The hub sorts seven features by region and query type. Google’s changelog entry says the pages exist to help “publishers, businesses, and aggregators learn about the different regional search features available and understand the eligibility criteria and how to participate.”
The changelog item is a documentation update. Some of the features it covers, including the EEA aggregator and supplier units, also rolled out that day, while others date back to February 2024.
What The Hub Lists
Filtering by region and query type returns the matching features. The EEA has the most. Aggregator units for comparison sites and supplier units for direct providers cover hotel, flight, ground transportation, and product queries. An ecosystem carousel covers weather, sports, finance, and translation, a “Job sites” carousel and refinement chip (a filter at the top of results) cover jobs, and structured data carousels cover travel, local, and product queries.
Türkiye gets a “Places sites” carousel and refinement chip for hotel and local business queries, plus the carousels. South Africa gets a “South African” badge and refinement chip for travel, product, car hire, food delivery, and bus booking searches, plus the carousels.
How Participation Differs
The structured data carousels are the only feature that requires markup, an ItemList combined with a supported LocalBusiness, Product, or Event type, with at least three entities on the summary or category page linking to detail pages.
Required feed and API integrations apply to the aggregator unit, while supplier results can optionally be enhanced with feeds. Hotel aggregators supply a lodging feed, flight and ground transportation aggregators connect through real-time APIs, and product aggregators go through the Comparison Shopping Services program. Aggregators also need approval as a Vertical Search Service.
The job sites and places sites features require no markup, and the ecosystem carousel requires no new structured data or special feed. Most of these pages link to an interest form. The supplier unit can rely on data accessible through web crawling. The supplier unit page lists no form, and a site qualifies by being a direct provider, such as a single hotel or airline, that serves EEA users.
What’s New And What Isn’t
Google’s September 8 changelog entry introduced the regional documentation package, including a dedicated ecosystem carousel page. The carousel page says the unit may appear next to answers built on charts or live data, such as stock prices or weather, and that a site must be “an authoritative source or a specialized provider” in its category to qualify. The page gives no launch date.
Google announced the job sites unit, refinement chips, and carousel rich results for the EEA in February 2024 to prepare for the Digital Markets Act. The South African badge dates to September 2024, and the changelog shows the carousels reaching Türkiye in May 2025 and South Africa that August.
“Places sites” was an EEA aggregator unit in 2024. The hub now lists it for Türkiye alone, and the documentation doesn’t say whether the EEA version was retired.
Why This Matters
Until now, working out which of these features applied to a given client meant piecing together blog posts and changelog entries going back two and a half years. Two filters on the hub give the answer, and each result names whether the path is markup, a feed plus approval, or a form.
Hotels, airlines, retailers, and aggregators with EEA traffic have the most to check, since the aggregator unit needs data work that takes time to set up while the supplier unit needs nothing beyond a crawlable site. For weather, sports, finance, and translation sites, the carousel page is the first written statement I’ve seen of who qualifies for that unit.
Looking Ahead
Local queries for dining and services are due to get the aggregator and supplier units, as I noted in yesterday’s report, and the hub doesn’t list them yet. The Commission’s 60-day compliance window from the July decision runs into late September. Search Central’s changelog is one place to watch for major documentation changes.
Featured Image: Cherdchai101/Shutterstock. Source: Google.
