Alphabet, the total number of paid clicks increased by 36% between the fourth quarter of 2015 and the fourth quarter of 2016. When we combine these two natural growth factors, we find that the natural growth of purchases - without doing anything more - was 89% (in clicks) in the year 2016. At first you might think that 89% growth without any work is a good thing. And it's. But if you can farm 89% without any effort, anyone can do it too. Growing at the same rate as all your competitors is not real growth; it is to maintain the status quo. In this article, we'll look at where this tremendous growth in Shopping is coming from and what retailers can do to grow their accounts beyond that.

Growth in natural purchases The huge growth in clicks on Google Shopping can largely be attributed to the effort that Google has put into Shopping ads. First, the number of ads shown by Google on a search results page has increased. And ads for a product offering, in particular, have grown on both mobile and desktop over the past two years. This “ad creep” pushed the organic jewelry retouching service results further and further down the page. In these two screenshots, for example, the organic results didn't even go past the fold at all (the text ads are highlighted in orange): Much of this ad creep – especially on mobile where there is no “straight rail” –

is due to the growth of visually oriented Shopping ads, where the product image is featured instead of all three traditional text lines. Not only did this ad format increase the raw number of ads shown to a user, but it also increased the amount of ad space taken up on the page. Note especially the results on mobile, where Shopping ads push even traditional text ads below the fold line. Since the majority of Google searches now come from mobile devices, it's likely that people's exposure to Shopping ads has increased as a result. So, if the desktop SERPs contain five to nine