# Google's aggregator unit for Europe is a comparison shopping feature, and its own links say so

> On product queries, every route Google gives for its European aggregator unit points into the Comparison Shopping Services help center.

Canonical: https://brandonlazovic.dev/articles/eea-aggregator-unit-comparison-shopping-feature/  
Author: Brandon Lazovic  
Published: 2026-09-10

## The short version

- Google published new eligibility documentation for its two European-only search units on September 8, 2026, and on product queries the aggregator unit routes entirely into the Comparison Shopping Services program, both for applying and for supplying data.
- Hotels, flights, and long-distance transport each get a data specification written for these units. Products get a link to a page in a different program's help center, which is the clearest signal of who the product side was built for.
- The supplier unit only appears when an aggregator unit appears, so a direct seller's presence in the new layout is conditional on a comparison service being triggered on that same search.
- This shipped on a regulator's calendar. The European Commission fined Google 890 million euros on July 23, 2026, with 460 million of that for self-preferencing in Search, 47 days before the documentation went up.

Google published new eligibility documentation for its European aggregator and supplier units on September 8, 2026, and both list product queries in scope. [1] Where the product instructions actually point is narrower. To apply for the aggregator unit on a product query, and again to supply its data, Google sends you into its Comparison Shopping Services program. [1] Travel gets three specifications written for these units, while products get a link to somebody else's onboarding. If you run an online store in the European Economic Area, that difference decides whether this is a project or a monitoring item.

> Every product route Google names for the new aggregator unit points into its Comparison Shopping Services help center, while hotels, flights, and long-distance transport each get a data specification of their own.

## What are Google's aggregator and supplier units?

The aggregator unit and the supplier unit are two sections of the Google results page, live only in the European Economic Area, covering hotels, flights, long-distance trains or buses, and products. The aggregator unit is one box holding a stack of approved providers, with the top-ranked one expanded and rivals collapsed behind a switcher. The supplier unit is a separate box where direct providers send users to their own website. [2]

Google describes the aggregator unit as "a multi-provider feature designed for Vertical Search Services (VSSs), including Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), Comparison Shopping Services, metasearch engines, and directories." [1] Clicks inside it leave for the provider's own site. Only one such unit shows at a time.

Neither unit is brand new. Google described aggregator units in a post from February 15, 2024 that already covered travel, local and shopping queries, using the same "hotels near me" example. [8] What changed this month is the per-unit eligibility documentation, and the supplier unit getting a name and a page of its own.

The two sit beside each other. Google's own note on the aggregator page reads: "To provide visibility to direct providers, Google Search shows another unit alongside the aggregator unit." [1] Neither is nested in the other, which matters more than it sounds, because the second one carries a condition.

## How do you tell the two units apart on a page?

The aggregator unit and the supplier unit differ by what each row points at. An aggregator unit row names a provider and expands into that provider's own picks, so its links carry you to the comparison site. A supplier unit card names an individual business and shows that business's own web domain, so its links carry you to the seller. Google's own illustrations show the same split. [1]

A second difference matters more for planning. The aggregator unit is populated by the provider, since Google says that "eligible aggregators populate their unit with results relevant to the user's query." [1] The supplier unit is not. Google says a direct provider does "not need to provide additional data beyond what's accessible through web crawling" to appear there, though feeds can enrich it. [2]

That asymmetry is easy to misread as good news for sellers. No application. Nothing to build. The condition attached to it is where the cost sits.

## Who is the aggregator unit for on product queries?

On product queries the aggregator unit is a Comparison Shopping Services feature, and Google's links say so twice. For applying, the aggregator page sends product businesses to the comparison shopping services contact form. For data, it sends them to a page titled "How to start showing your product pages across Google," which sits inside the Comparison Shopping Services help center. [3] Both roads lead into the same program.

Set that beside how travel is handled. Hotel queries get the Lodging Point of Interest Feed. [4] Ground transport gets the Transport features API. [5] Flights get the Partner standard Live API. [6] Each of those is a data specification named for this purpose. Products get an onboarding page that existed before either unit did.

Google's eligibility section repeats the pattern. Listing which searches qualify, it names "hotels, flights, ground transportation" and leaves products out, even though the scope sentence higher on the same page includes them. [1] Every worked example on both pages is a hotel, a flight or a local service. No product example appears anywhere. That gap has had two and a half years to close, since Google described these units back in February 2024 with shopping queries already in scope. [8] A product specification still missing after that long reads as a choice more than a backlog.

**My read:** the product side was scoped to participants who already have infrastructure. A Comparison Shopping Service in Europe is already inside a Google program with its own help center, its own contact route and its own onboarding. Pointing product queries there costs Google nothing to write and asks those businesses to do nothing new. Whether that means the product side is finished or merely deferred, the documentation cannot tell you.

I would call this a routing tell. What a specification lists in scope is cheap, much like a form that says it accepts every kind of application. The comparison only goes so far, since a form cannot choose where to route you and a specification's authors did. Where it sends you is expensive, because someone had to decide which desk fields the request.

## Why did Google ship this in September 2026?

Google published the aggregator and supplier unit documentation to a regulator's clock. On July 23, 2026 the European Commission fined Google for breaching the Digital Markets Act, and the Search half of that decision found the company had given preferential treatment to its own shopping, hotels, transport and sports results over rival services. [7] The Commission is an EU body, while the units themselves cover the wider European Economic Area, which adds Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The penalty came to 890 million euros in total, of which 460 million attached to Search. [7] The Commission ordered Google to end the non-compliance and published no deadline for doing so. [7]

The Commission's description of the problem maps closely onto the shape of the fix. Google "displays its own services more prominently in search results, including at the top of the search results page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, while similar third-party services do not have the same prominence." [7] A box that gives each approved provider its own expandable section, with the top one open and the rest one click away, is a fairly direct answer to that sentence.

The documentation went up 47 days later, on September 8. [1] That sequence is worth holding onto whenever the feature reads as a product decision, because the calendar behind it was the Commission's.

## Are the units live in the EEA yet?

The aggregator and supplier units were not visible on any search I checked. On September 10, 2026 I ran travel and retail queries against Google in France and Germany, including Google's own worked example, "hotels near me." Neither the aggregator unit nor the supplier unit appeared on any of them. On the travel side, the lodging module and six comparison sites ran as separate results, and retail carried the familiar product grid.

The German product page is the interesting one. Its grid was sourced from price-comparison services including idealo and billiger.de, and every offer in the detail panel named the service that supplied it, showing labels like "By Google" and "By Redbrain." That attribution layer is the older European remedy, and it has been running for years.

What I did not see is as informative as what I did. No box carried a provider switcher. No section grouped six comparison sites under one heading. Each of them held an ordinary separate result, which is the arrangement the aggregator unit is designed to replace with a single stack.

**One caveat:** four searches in two markets on one day set no rollout percentage. They do establish that a merchant checking today may still see the page they have always seen.

## What should a retailer do about it?

For most online retailers, the new aggregator and supplier units are a monitoring item, and the reason is structural. A brand selling its own products is not a Vertical Search Service, so the aggregator unit is not the box it competes for. Its route is the supplier unit, and Google says plainly on both pages that the supplier unit only appears when the aggregator unit appears. [2]

Read as a consequence, that condition does real work. Where no comparison service triggers an aggregator unit on a query, no supplier unit renders either. A merchant's presence in the new layout is therefore conditional on a comparison service being approved and present on the same search, which is not something optimization creates.

How much that bites depends on the market. Germany has dense comparison coverage, so an aggregator unit will likely trigger on most commercial queries there. A smaller European market with fewer approved services gives the condition more room. Measuring comparison-service density in the markets you actually sell into is the closest thing to real work this change produces.

Baseline your current product-unit visibility per European market before the layout settles, because once it changes there is no before to compare against. Confirm too that your product feeds cover every European country you sell into, since feed coverage is what makes a merchant matchable at all.

Hold off on rebuilding reporting. Google's documentation names no way to isolate either unit in Search Console, so a dashboard built now would be measuring an assumption.

## Sources

1. Google Search Central - Aggregator unit in Google Search (eligibility, data requirements, best practices, query scope) — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/aggregator-unit
2. Google Search Central - Supplier unit in Google Search (who qualifies, dependency on the aggregator unit, crawling sufficiency) — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/supplier-unit
3. Google Comparison Shopping Services Help - How to start showing your product pages across Google — https://support.google.com/css-center/answer/14157117
4. Google Actions Center - Lodging Point of Interest Feed reference — https://developers.google.com/actions-center/verticals/lodging/reference/point-of-interest-feed
5. Google for Developers - Transport features API — https://developers.google.com/travel/transport
6. Google for Developers - Partner standard Live API specification for flights — https://developers.google.com/travel/flights/otas_guides/live-API-specification
7. European Commission - Commission fines Google 890 million euros for breaches of the Digital Markets Act, 23 July 2026 — https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-fines-google-eur890-million-breaches-digital-markets-act-2026-07-23_en
8. Google Search Central Blog - New Search experiences in EEA: Rich results, aggregator units, and refinement chips, 15 February 2024 — https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/02/search-experiences-in-eea