How to compete (and win) in ecommerce SEO in 2026 & beyond

Ecommerce SEO is one of the most rapidly evolving areas of search, and that’s not going to change. From integrating product listings to cluttering search results with more SERP features than we’ve ever seen – the rate of change is moving faster than ever. If you, as a brand, aren’t keeping up, then you will fall behind.

Before we look at what you should be doing as part of your ecommerce SEO strategy, let’s look at what’s changed over recent years:

Product grids are in, and they’re here to stay

Almost every UK ecommerce search result will now have a product grid somewhere on the 1st page. Over the last 12 months Google’s been prioritising organic product listings more and more, at the expense of traditional blue links.

To put some data behind this, we analysed over 6,000 ecommerce search results for buying keywords, and we found that:

• 99% of keywords have at least one product grid on page 1
• 42% of the time a product grid appears, it appears above all blue links
• Each product grid has an average of 6 product listings on mobile
• Some keywords have up to 4 product grids on page 1 alone

A little louder for the people at the back – 42% of keywords have a product grid above ANY blue link.

That’s a clear sign that Google’s moving ecommerce results to a product-first UX; or at the very least an even split between products and categories.

Organic click-through rates aren’t what they used to be

What I’ve seen for clients operating in ecommerce verticals is a clear drop in click-through rate (CTR) for blue-link results. In fact, for some ecommerce keywords I’m seeing a CTR of 2% or under when ranking in position 1. That’s a HUGE change from how we used to view CTR. Gone are the days of forecasting at 15%-20% for #1.

So, what’s causing the drop?

A couple of reasons – neither of which we can do anything about. So let’s get used to the new normal.

First, Google’s pushing ads more than ever. More on this below.

Second, users have way more choice in Google’s search results than they’ve ever had. Go back a couple of years and the user has a shopping ads carousel, a few search ads, your 10 blue links and maybe a People Also Ask and Related Searches section (neither of which were known for taking many clicks). But today users have all of this plus 30+ product listings.

More choice of links to click = bigger distribution of where those clicks go.

Something else that goes hand in hand with this is that a 3 x 2 product grid on mobile takes up the same space (roughly) as 3 x blue links. That’s 6 links instead of 3. And, because of this, being listed in a product grid at the top of page 1 will give you fewer clicks than if you were ranked in a blue link at the top of page 1.

So product rankings and blue link rankings aren’t equal (at least not in my experience).

Google Ads are fighting hard to take your organic clicks

This was one of Google’s more egregious changes to the way ads look in the search results. My honest opinion is that it’s the most obvious cash grab that we’ve seen from Google in a while.

There’s a couple of changes here worth mentioning. First, Google grouping all top of page ads under a ‘Sponsored results’ label (conveniently making ads look more like organic results) and bottom of page ads are often replaced with mid-page ads for page 1 results.

This means users are more likely to click ads over organic results. Boo (if you work in SEO like me). What this also means is that between shopping ads and search ads, your first organic result is now way below the fold. 

AI Overviews are coming for your commercial searches 

As of the 18th of September AI Overviews had a big surge in Google’s search results for ecommerce keywords. We track the various search features that appear in the results pages on a weekly basis, and when I started writing this post last week AI Overviews were appearing for ~3% of keywords (for my ecommerce clients). But this week that figure is closer to 60%. That’s a massive jump.

Ecommerce results were one of the few spaces that AI Overviews hadn’t crept into, but it seems that’s not the case anymore. Maybe this is a test from Google, but maybe not. If AIOs are here to stay for a lot of your ecommerce buying keywords then you need to start focusing on making sure your brand and your products are recommended as much as possible.

So, how can you compete in Google’s ecommerce search landscape?

Understand your opportunities (& know your market)

If you’re an ecommerce brand with plenty of SKUs then your data is your best friend. Seriously, in 2026 and beyond, you can’t deliver consistent growth without getting your hands dirty and digging through your data regularly.

When I say data, I mean:

• Your Google Analytics funnel performance at category and product level
• Your Google Search Console query, page and device insights
• Google trends (free) for finding growing and declining search trends
• Your ads data: Looking for opportunities in search terms, categories, products and analysing conversion performance
• Google’s search results: Scrape these regularly and review how the SERPs look (and monitor changes over time), who top performers are in your space, who’s growing and who’s declining, your overall position in the market – at category level for blue links and SKU level for product grids.
• Your product reviews: What are your customers saying about you and your products?
• Your brand mentions online: What’s your brand perception? (very important for AI search), what are prospective customers asking before they buy? What are the key bits of product information that you aren’t sharing on your product pages that customers need to go elsewhere to find?
• Reddit and forum posts about your market: Similar to above but what are the themes of conversations and questions from your target customer base that are relevant to your product range (latest trends, best brand to buy from, comparing brands for specific use cases)

Sounds like a lot right? It is. But what you’ll learn from going through this data each month is invaluable. It’s where you find the opportunities to propel your organic growth.

The good news is that analysing data has never been easier. APIs + LLMs are your saving grace. The overarching questions you need to be answering are:

• What’s changing?
• Where are my opportunities?
• How do I capitalise on them?

Build workflows that help with answering those questions using the data points above and you’ll start moving in the right direction.

And remember that Google’s blue links, product grids and AI Overviews all require different approaches and tactics. You can be visible in one and not the others. Make sure your ecommerce SEO strategy is based on the SERP features that are going to bring in the most sales, and aim for maximum visibility for your brand, products and collections.

Build and maintain your product feed

If you want to have SKUs listed in Google’s product grids then you need to understand one thing – this is not the same as ranking in Google. You can have great blue link rankings and poor product visibility (and vice versa).

Your product feed is the most important factor to securing free product listings in Google.

You can either create a product feed directly in Google Merchant Centre (not recommended) or connect via your CMS (recommended and simple to set up if you’re using WooCommerce or Shopify). Connecting via CMS means changes to your feed will automatically sync with Merchant Centre.

When it comes to your feed, you need to make sure you tick these boxes:

• Optimise your product titles to target your customers’ searches (i.e. how they will look for your products)
• Use high-quality product imagery
• Include your product GTIN (where possible)
• Make use of all relevant product attributes (giving Google as much information as possible)

And stay on top of changes to Google’s Merchant Centre. New attributes have been released quite frequently so far in 2026 and you should be taking advantage of every new opportunity to maximise your product visibility.

We could (and likely will) write an article just on optimising your product feed as it’s a big topic, but one that will give you big returns if you spend time understanding it.

Match your website structure to how your customers search

This is where I’ve seen the biggest wins in ecommerce SEO come from.

Let’s say you sell a range of men’s jackets. You have a men’s jackets collections page on your website, but that’s it.

However, your customers don’t just search for men’s jackets. They search:

• By material: Men’s leather jackets
• By colour: Men’s black jackets
• By size: Men’s large jackets
• By season: Men’s winter jackets
• By feature: Men’s waterproof jackets
• By use case: Men’s running jackets

You need a collection page to target every search intent. For most ecommerce websites, all of this opportunity is locked inside the faceted navigation.

You need to research the different buying journeys your customers take, identify the different searches that happen for each category and product range and then create indexable collection pages for each and every search intent. If you’re a smaller or less authoritative website, this is where you can compete and win sales.

Make sure you build out an internal linking structure that supports crawling and accessibility for your new pages. Creating templated internal link hierarchies is the best way to do this to make sure you bring new pages into your structure correctly.

Be willing to utilise Google Ads to maximise your reach

Yes we’re talking about SEO here but a good digital strategy doesn’t just rely on one channel. Use Google Ads to fill the gaps that your organic strategy is struggling to reach. Merge your ads and SEO data together to find these opportunities and react quickly to get sales from searches that you can’t reach organically (and to avoid wasting spend in areas where organic performance has grown).

And remember that not every sale starts with a Google search

While Google’s still the dominant search platform, social search and AI search is growing year-on-year. Research how your customer base searches and aim to be everywhere they are. Whether it’s TikTok, ChatGPT, Reddit or any other platform. Tailor your content, your messaging and your digital strategy to put your brand and your products in front of your customers at as many touchpoints as possible.