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For a while now, SERP features have made SEO for ecommerce distinctly different from other verticals like B2B or local. And yet, most teams still measure success against classic search results. Without third-party tools, it’s hard to get a full picture from the data that Google reports. As a result, some retailers fall significantly behind while thinking they’re ahead of the game.
And so the problem remains remarkably hidden. To make it visible, I used ecommerce tracking platform Audience Key to analyze 4,000+ keywords and almost 40,000 product grids over nine months.
Product Grids Get Higher CTRs Than Organic Results
Product grids aren’t just another SERP feature to track in your dashboard. They represent Google’s final transformation from search engine to shopping marketplace – a change I’ve been documenting since ecommerce shifts, where I showed how Google merged web results and shopping tabs.
There’s evidence that product grid CTRs are higher than classic search results. Advanced Web Ranking data shows product grids cut the CTR on organic results in half.
The quantitative data confirms observations from Brodie Clark, who reports an example of up to 58% CTR on product grids. I see the same with my clients.
When I analyzed the state of ecommerce SERP features, images and product listings were already becoming dominant. But product grids take this visual transformation to its logical conclusion: They push traditional blue links so far down the page that they become secondary navigation options, not primary discovery mechanisms.
Product grids are:
- Filterable: Users can narrow by price, brand, condition, and features without leaving the SERP.
- Visual-first: High-quality product images take center stage, not meta descriptions.
- Dynamic: Content updates as Google crawls your Merchant Center feed, not when they re-index your page.
- Commercial: They only appear for queries with shopping intent, creating a two-tier search system.
Product Grid Placements Grew 82% In 9 Months
Google is allocating significantly more prime real estate to visual product feeds over traditional text results.
In May 2025, there were 1,825 total grid placements among these brands.
By February 2026, that number skyrocketed to 3,321 – an 82% increase in just nine months.
In fact, 96% of all SERPs in this dataset show product grids!
- 40% of SERPs show only one product grid.
- 32% show two grids.
- 22% show three.
- 6% show four or more.
And surprisingly, the number of more than one product grid in a single SERP declined by -4% over the last nine months.
Case Study: 4 Brands Fighting For First Place
The product grid takeover is a great opportunity to show how brands can get left behind when they miss the train. The laptop query space on Google is a great example, with a case study of four refurbished computer hardware brands.
Discount Computer Depot is the traditional SEO powerhouse. In early 2026, they held over 87% (4.6m/5.2m) standard organic rankings in the top 3 positions.
Yet, their product grid presence is virtually non-existent, at just 2.4% (80/3,321).
Back Market has a mere 1.7% of the top 3 rankings but owns 59% of the visual product grids (see chart below).
Back Market saw massive growth in grid placements, jumping from 745 in May 2025 to 1,960 in February 2026 and overtaking Newegg in late 2025.
Interestingly, their data perfectly shows the inverse correlation between legacy rank and actual modern visibility (notice that product grids are on a second y-axis in the chart below and have a much lower occurrence than classic search results).
Other players, like PC Liquidation, have been able to grow their organic top 3 keyword rankings, but product grids are not following suit. The two types of search results can run completely independently of each other.
Other players, like Newegg, see similar trends as Back Market: Classic organic rankings decline while product grid placements grow.
The Back Market vs. Discount Computer Depot comparison reveals the new competitive landscape.
Back Market didn’t win by playing the old game better. They won by recognizing the game had changed.
Organic Rank And Grid Presence Are Independent Systems
Here’s what separates product grid winners from traditional SEO winners:
1. Feed quality over content quality: Your product descriptions still matter, but your Merchant Center feed quality matters more. Clean, complete, structured data beats beautifully written prose. Google doesn’t need to parse your HTML anymore; they want machine-readable attributes.
2. Visual assets over backlinks: A single high-quality product image on a white background can generate more clicks than a dozen referring domains. Classic SEO authority (think high-quality backlinks) will still help you rank in traditional results, but they’re invisible in product grids where image quality, price competitiveness, and merchant ratings dominate.
3. Price competitiveness over domain authority: When users can compare prices at a glance, your 15-year-old domain and DR 70 profile mean nothing. The lowest price (with acceptable shipping terms) wins. This commoditizes traffic in a way traditional SEO never did.
4. Merchant Center optimization over on-page SEO: Product title templates, GTIN accuracy, and feed error rates are the new meta descriptions and header tags. Many ecommerce SEOs don’t even have access to their company’s Merchant Center account.
The implications extend beyond individual tactics. As I noted in “How to compensate eroded traffic,” when you can’t win with product keywords, you need to think horizontally: different page types, new categories, and editorial content that addresses users earlier in their journey.
Category Pages Win Grids; Product Pages Rarely Qualify
Even when focusing my analysis only on actively ranking URLs, Google shows a massive preference for category and listing pages (e.g., /categories/apple-refurbished.html) over individual product pages.
- Category Pages: 3,367 instances (~97% of the filtered data).
- Product Pages: 90 instances (~3% of the filtered data).
While rare, product pages (PDPs) are significantly more likely to rank for keywords that specify technical details or specific hardware models.
- Keywords like “17 inch desktop monitor,” “19 computer screen,” and “20in computer monitor” are among the top terms that successfully trigger specific product pages.
- Searches for specific builds, such as “computer dell optiplex” or “computer desktop hp i7,” also lead to individual product pages rather than broad categories.
There is a strong correlation between “price-intent” keywords and the density of the product grids column in the search results.
- Maximum grid density: Keywords such as “gaming desktop price,” “lenovo laptops prices,” and “cheap laptop” consistently trigger a maximum of four product grids.
- Visual competition: These keywords represent high-intent comparison shoppers, and Google responds by filling the SERP with visual product grids to facilitate quick price comparisons.
The Measurement Gap Makes The Problem Invisible
For years now, ecommerce SEO has split into two distinct disciplines:
- Traditional SEO will increasingly focus on informational content, brand queries, and long-tail discovery – areas where product grids don’t dominate. This is where authority, content depth, and technical optimization still matter.
- Merchant Center Optimization becomes its own specialization, focused on feed quality, product data accuracy, competitive pricing strategy, and visual asset production. This looks more like marketplace management than SEO.
The most frustrating part of this transformation? We can’t properly measure it without expensive third-party tools.
Google Search Console reports on traditional organic results. Merchant Center provides product grid analytics. But there’s no unified view. You can’t answer basic questions like:
- What percentage of my search visibility comes from product grids vs. traditional results?
- How do grid placements correlate with conversion rates?
- Am I losing traditional rankings because I’m gaining grid placements, or despite it?
Even the comparison of product snippets and merchant listings in Search Console does not allow you to compare product grids against classic web results.
Featured Image: McLittle Stock/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
